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\3 . cJ , U^JV\^^C>7^^^<y^^^iA'^<:> - 



A MEMORIAL 



TO 



Caleb Thomas Winchester 

1847-1920 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
IN WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 




MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT 
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 



M 






Copyright, 1921, by 
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 



Printed by The Abingdon Press 



DEC 27 1921 

4:)CiA63Q955 



CALEB THOMAS WINCHESTER 

Born January 18. 1847 Died March 24, 1920 

B.A., 1869: M.A.. 1872; LL.D.. 1919; L.H.D. (Dickinson). 1892 

Ubrarian. 1869-1885 

Olin Professor 6i Rhetoric and English Literature. 1873-1890 

Olin Professor of English Literature. 1890-1920 

His genuine, wholesome human nature was adorned with urbanity of 
manner, strengthened by sincerity and virility of thought, and enriched 
by the graces of Christian faith and living. He revealed to a rare degree 
the genius for friendship and the gift of helpful counsel. 

Wide reading and an unusual faculty for sympathetic as well as 
accurate criticism made him a refined and cathcJic scholar who translated 
his riches of leammg and fine philosophy of life, with charm of expression, 
into illununating lectures and books. 

As a teacher he imparted to his students the ability to form sound, 
accurate, critical judgmoits of the works of literature, to mterpret them 
through full knowledge of the age in which they were produced, and to 
consider them as expressions of life and thought which should help to 
form a broad, virile, constructive philosophy of life, and bspire to work 
with loyalty to that philosophy. 

The half-century of service of this best bebved of Wesleyan teachers 
has endowed the University with a wealth of noble inq>iration and of 
sweet memories. 

He was a Christian, a gentleman, a scholar, and a teacher tans 
reproche. 



{From the Wesleyan University Bulletin, June, iq2o) 



Caleb i;|)omas( Wintbtittt : 

♦ « ♦ ♦ 

"Yin tecognttton of i^oar clear btain, 
/3l pour large Ijeart, pour fertile 
imagination, pour fine tasite for tfte 
beautiful in eberp bomain of ijuman 
life, pour memorp ritljlp jBitoreb tDitfi 
trea£;ures(,pour fas(cinating anbmag= 
ical cliarm of £(peect) anb influence, 
pour lirilliant career as( a teacher of 
€nglis;li literature, pour multiform 
sierbicejJ to ^e^lepan ®[nibergitp 
tljrougliout tfje f iftp pearg siintt pour 
grabuation, 3 glablp abmit pou to 
tiie begree of Boctor of Eatoje;* :: :: 

(Characterization by President Shanklin, 
Commencement, 1919) 



It 



CONTENTS 

rAOS 

Tablet from Wesleyan University Bulletin ] 3 
Characterization for Honorary Degree ... 5 

Introduction 11 

Biographical Accounts 15 

Harrington: From Wesleyan University Bulletin. ... 17 
Ryan: From Zions Herald 36 

Complimentary Dinner 53 

Program 57 

Shanklin: Introductory Remarks 59 

Cross: Address in Behalf of the Departments of 

English in New England Colleges and Universities . 62 
Gibbs: Address in Behalf of Professor Winchester's 

Pupils 75 

Mead: Address as Colleague in the Department of 

English 82 

Rice: Address as Colleague on the Faculty for a 

Half-Century 89 

Winchester: Response 96 

Chapel Service 119 

Crawford: Prayer 121 

Dutcher: Remarks 123 

Funeral 125 

Beach: Remarks 127 

Shanklin: Remarks 133 

Wesleyan University Club of New York. . 141 

Berrien: Address 143 

Memorial Service 153 

Program 155 

Rice: Prayer 157 

Axson: Memorial Address 160 

7 



CONTENTS 

WiLBRAHAM AcADEMY MEMORIAL ExERCISES. . 201 

Noon: Memories of Professor "Winchester at School 

and College 203 

Harrington: Professor Winchester: a Model Son of 

Wilbraham 208 

Resolutions and other Tributes 213 

Board of Trustees 215 

Faculty 217 

College Body 219 

Xi Chapter of Psi Upsilon 220 

Wesleyan University Club of New York 221 

New York East Conference 222 

First Methodist Episcopal Church, Middletown. . . 224 

Conversational Club 227 

Personal Tributes 230 

Press Notices 239 

Christian Advocate, 1919 241 

Wesleyan Alumnus 243 

Tribute by Professor Rice 248 

Tribute by Professor Kuhns 251 

Tribute by Professor Thorn dike 251 

Tribute by Professor Given 254 

Wesleyan Argus 260 

New York Evening Post , 262 

Christian Advocate, 1920 264 

The Review 266 

A Bibliography of the Published Writ- 
ings OF Professor Winchester 269 

Professor Winchester as a Public Lec- 
turer 281 

Professor Winchester's Courses in Wes- 
leyan University 



8 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Portrait of Professor Winchester . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Professor and Mrs. Winchester on Porch 

OF their Home 23 

Professor Winchester's Residence 49 

Wesleyan Faculty, 1872 106 

Wesleyan Faculty, 1915 198 

After the 1919 Commencement 248 



9 



INTRODUCTION 

Throughout its history the pride of Wes- 
leyan University has been its faculty. In 
the ninety years which have elapsed since its 
founding thii'teen' of the sixty-six persons 
who have held fuU professorships have oc- 
cupied that position for a quarter -century 
or more. These are the men who, by their 
long periods of service, have, naturally, con- 
tributed in the largest degree to the estab- 
Hshment of the high repute of the Wesleyan 
faculty and to the moulding of the scholarly 
traditions of the institution. It has, more- 
over, been the rare good fortune of Wes- 
leyan that three of these distinguished schol- 
ars and teachers, John Monroe Van Vleck, 
William North Rice, and Caleb Thomas 

^In order of length of incumbency of full professorship 
they are: William North Rice, 1867-1918; Caleb Thomas 
Winchester, 1873-1920; John Monroe Van Vleck, 1858-1904; 
James Cooke Van Benschoten, 1863-1902; Morris Barker 
Crawford, 1884- ; John Johnston, 1837-1873; Andrew 
Campbell Armstrong, 1888- ; Wilbur Olin Atwater, 1874- 
1907; Herbert William Conn, 1888-1917; William Edward 
Mead, 1893- ; Oscar Kuhns, 1893- ; Augustus William 
Smith, 1831-1857; Calvin Sears Harrington, 1861-1886. 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Winchester, each thus served in its faculty- 
through more than half its history. These 
three long-time colleagues and friends have, 
by their scholarly and inspiring teaching, 
their abundant and sacrificing service, their 
noble and upright lives, endowed Wesleyan 
with a rich heritage of enduring achieve- 
ments and precious memories. 

It is no depreciation of any other on this 
honored faculty roll to say that none was 
better beloved and none has wielded wider 
and finer influence through his personality 
and his teaching than Professor Winches- 
ter. Such tributes as the complimentary 
dinner arranged in his honor by his former 
students in 1919 and the authorization by the 
board of trustees of the pubHcation of this 
memorial volume are but superficial evi- 
dences of the love and admiration which 
Professor Winchester, as friend and teacher, 
awakened in the hearts of more than fifty 
classes of Wesleyan students. Every mem- 
ber of the board of trustees and every col- 
league in the faculty valued Professor 
Winchester's friendship as a rare and rich 
privilege. Though each may not utter his 
own grateful encomium on Professor Win- 
12 



INTRODUCTION 

Chester, and though there is much that is too 
deep and too intimately precious to find ut- 
terance, yet Wesleyan cannot deny itself 
the privilege of recording through the fol- 
lowing pages the words of a few in whose 
sentiments all will join with hearty accord. 
The undersigned committee, appointed by 
the board of trustees to prepare this volume, 
desire to express their appreciation to the 
several speakers, writers, and publishers for 
the permission to use the materials here pre- 
sented, and to thank others who have aided 
in divers ways in the work of compilation. 
The editorial work has been delegated by 
the committee to one of their number, Vice- 
President Dutcher, who has also prepared 
the sections relating to Professor Winches- 
ter's pubhcations, lectures, and courses of 
instruction. 

William Arnold Shanklin, 

David Geoege Downey, 

Stockton Axson, 

Geoege Matthew Dutchee, 

Committee. 
Wesleyan University, 
March 24, 1921. 



13 



BIOGRAPHICAL 
ACCOUNTS 



CALEB THOMAS WINCHESTER 

By Professor Karl Pomeroy Har- 
rington^ '82* 

With the death of Professor Caleb 
Thomas Winchester, for more than a half 
century a prominent figure in the faculty of 
Wesleyan University, is marked the end of 
an epoch in the history of the institution. 
For "Winch," as all his students and col- 
leagues fondly called him, was the last of that 
group of master men whose half -century of 
service linked the Wesleyan of the present 
with that day of small things and high ideals 
that existed on this campus in the period 
just subsequent to the Civil War, and whose 
steady loyalty, clear vision, and mature 
judgment played so important a part in the 
evolution of the greater Wesleyan. As a 
somewhat bashful freshman, young Win- 
chester was one of a college body totaling 
one hundred and twenty-one students, while 
the corps of instruction comprised the pres- 
ident, five professors, and one instructor. 

* Reprinted from the Wesleyan University Bulletin, June 
1920, with some additions. 

17 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

No special buildings for library, chapel, sci- 
entific laboratories, or museums yet graced 
the campus; and the combined college and 
society libraries amounted to but fourteen 
thousand volumes. Of the one hundred and 
twenty-one students only two were enrolled 
in the so-called "scientific course" designed 
for those "who had in view "the business pur- 
suits of active life," while the rank and file, 
who were mostly headed for some profes- 
sional career, pursued a fairly rigid course 
of Latin, Greek, mathematics, and science, 
for the first three years, with such subjects 
as evidences of Christianity, international 
law, and Butler's Analogy emphasized in 
the senior year, and declamation and com- 
position required throughout the whole 
period of four years — a course which, if an- 
tiquated in the eyes of the present genera- 
tion, produced from even that small com- 
pany of undergraduates a Knapp and an 
Olin in law, a Hendrix in the church, a Car- 
hart in science, and a Winchester in liter- 
ature. 

He was born in a Methodist parsonage at 
Uncasville,' Connecticut, in 1847. He pre- 

1 In the town of Montville, New London County. 

18 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

pared for college at Wilbraham, where he 
won distinction by those intellectual and 
social quahties which were later to come to 
such noble fruitage. Here too, in one of the 
famous literary societies in the school, he 
gained recognition for his command of lan- 
guage, and laid the foundations for the emi- 
nent faculty for public expression which 
made his name known from sea to sea. 

On entering Wesleyan in 1865, he, with 
two of his Wilbraham classmates, joined the 
Xi chapter of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, to 
the life of which his loyalty, geniality, and 
wisdom contributed an important influence 
for more than half a century. His college 
activities were along intellectual lines, as was 
the fashion of the time. One of the* first 
men of his class in general scholarship, he 
shone throughout his coiu-se in rhetorical 
achievements. His Sophomore Exhibition 
oration upon Hawthorne and Thackeray 
appeared in the Argus in his senior year, 
probably without essential alteration, and 
exhibits his notable abiUty to single out the 
elements of vital importance in an author 
and sum them up succinctly. 

At the Junior Exhibition his name ap- 
19 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

peared on the program for a discussion with 
A. F. Chase of the comparative utility of 
the mathematics and the classics. In com- 
petition for the Rich prize he spoke on Oli- 
ver Goldsmith, having previously delivered 
a noteworthy "chapel piece" on the same 
subject, in which had been remarked that 
peculiar gift of his of introducing his audi- 
ence to a personal acquaintance with an 
author. His Commencement speech was 
an "ancient classical oration" on Homer. 
Deeply interested in philosophy, he cap- 
tured the metaphysics prize, and shared in 
a division of a prize in moral philosophy. 
By the end of his junior year he was able to 
succeed, where so many had failed, in writ- 
ing a poem worthy to take the Taylor poetry 
prize. The title was S omnia, and the poem 
appeared in the Argus the next September. 
The Olin prize too was easily his, for the 
Argus report of his Rich prize oration re- 
marks that in it "he fully sustained the rep- 
utation which he has so fairly earned of be- 
ing the first writer of his class." The Argus 
itself had come into being during his junior 
year, and he was elected to its first full-term 
board of editors for his senior year. 

2a 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

The glee club then consisted of a quartet 
of which he, always enthusiastically fond of 
music, was a member. Occasionally it went 
out of town to give a concert. He was chair- 
man of the committee on music for class day, 
and at least one of the songs was of his own 
authorship. It began: 

Like a dream that passeth fleetly, 

and under the title "Farewell Song" appears 
now in the Wesleyan Song Booh, One of 
the best features of the exercises on that day 
was the prophecy, which he wrote, and which 
was highly commended. 

Professor Winchester used to tell with 
much glee the story of his first arrival in 
Middletown with two or three comrades; 
how, after passing four or five different cem- 
eteries on the way to the college grounds, he 
facetiously remarked that they would be 
lucky if they ever got out of this town alive ! 
In a sense the remark was prophetic; for 
from the time he first reached Middletown 
as a freshman he never knew any other home. 

Upon his graduation in 1869 he was ap- 
pointed librarian. The system of catalogu- 
ing introduced by Professor Van Vleck and 
2X 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

extended by Professor Rice was now car- 
ried through the entire collection. Some 
of the old cards are still to be seen, in the 
handwriting of Van Vleck, Rice, or Win- 
chester. In those days the library, which had 
just been installed in Rich Hall, was open 
only two or three days in the week, and then 
but for an hour or two. But in spite of its 
relatively minor place in the life of the col- 
lege, the new librarian was able to inaugu- 
rate various important features of that 
poUcy which has resulted in the splendid col- 
lection of to-day. For four years he gave 
himself chiefly to his duties as librarian, and 
although after that his time was mainly oc- 
cupied in other departmental work, he con- 
tinued as librarian until 1885. In 1873 he 
was appointed Olin Professor of Rhetoric 
and English Literature; after 1890 he was 
Olin Professor of English Literature. 
When he was invited to the professorship 
of English literature at the reorganization 
of the University of Chicago, the temptation 
was strong. But the universal protest from 
Wesleyan men, his own loyalty to his alma 
mater, and his devotion to his home in Mid- 
dletown, were among the many reasons that 
22 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

led him to decline. His love for his home 
was always touching: by the shore, or at the 
mountains, or amid the rose gardens of Cal- 
ifornia, his thoughts ever turned fondly 
back to his own home on High Street, com- 
manding the most attractive bit of scenery 
in Middletown. He always showed a ten- 
der interest in his flowers and took fond care 
of "Rab," the Airedale, and little lame 
"Jackie," the Boston bull. He hved an ideal 
family life. He is survived by Mrs. Win- 
chester, nee Alice Goodwin Smith, whom he 
married in 1880, and by his son Julian Caleb, 
whose mother, nee Juha Stackpole Smith, 
died in 1877. 

In his teaching of rhetoric and literature 
Professor Winchester blazed essentially 
new trails. Himself a master of the art of 
composition, he adopted the method of 
meeting each individual student for per- 
sonal conference. He also prescribed care- 
fully elaborated lists of subjects calling for 
different styles of writing. Enghsh htera- 
ture in his own imdergraduate days had been 
little more than a name in the curriculum. 
There was only a single course, with a text- 
book that did httle but summarize facts. 
23 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

The Winchester idea was to study the liter- 
ature itself, at first hand; while his primary- 
principle of criticism was to know what you 
like or do not like, and why. Early in his 
teaching he prepared several series of read- 
ings in English literature, by periods, and 
arranged his courses to include three ele- 
ments: text-book study about the authors, 
class-room reading and criticism of epochal 
writers like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Mil- 
ton, and private reading of one or another 
of the aforementioned series of selections. 
Not only were his courses of readings pub- 
lished in due time for the benefit of other 
institutions and the general public, but as a 
leading member of the national committee 
on requirements in English for admission 
to college, he was largely instrumental in 
introducing into American secondary edu- 
cation the practice of studying English from 
masterpieces of its literature. 

Every Wesleyan student wanted to elect 
courses with "Winch," the master teacher. 
His charming conversational style intro- 
duced one to the author as a personal friend, 
whom one might come to know intimately, 
so that one more clearly understood the mo- 
24 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

tive, occasion, and circumstances of the writ- 
ings concerned, and better estimated their 
literary value. And the piercing intellectual 
vision of this prince of teachers, who ever 
loved the good and the beautiful and de- 
spised the ugly and the evil, disclosed what 
was worth while in each hterary work and 
led his pupils to set up sane standards of 
criticism. His keen analysis tore away the 
mask from many a pretentious bit of mere 
rhetoric. So for anything ignoble in its ten- 
dency, like many a so-called realistic novel, 
and for the hideous formlessness of much of 
the alleged poetry of modern faddists, he 
had little but contempt. Here too, in the 
field of criticism, he was a pioneer; for his 
Principles of Literary Criticism, embodying 
the ideals that he had set before successive 
classes, proved a revelation and an inspira- 
tion to teachers in all hteratures. 

The high character of the standards that 
he set not only for himself, but also for his 
students, was periodically revealed in his 
examination papers. With the habit of shirk- 
ing the rather irksome task of carefully pre- 
paring an examination paper he had no sym- 
pathy. He used to say that it meant about 
25 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

a half -day's hard work to prepare a really- 
good paper ; and a student who had any real 
appreciation of the subject must, on com- 
pleting an examination of his, with its search- 
ing test of acquaintance with the authors, 
have felt a certain proud satisfaction in hav- 
ing really learned something worth while. 

Such mastery of the field of hterature and 
of the right principles of criticism naturally 
found expression in various kinds of activ- 
ity. Besides producing such books as The 
Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, A Group of 
English Essayists, and Wordsworth, How 
to Know Him, he was for many years asso- 
ciated with Professor Kittredge, of Harvard 
University, in the editorship of the Athenae- 
um Press series of English texts. Some oc- 
casional papers or articles for periodical 
literature were developed later to larger pro- 
portions. Thus the address on John Wes- 
ley the Man, given at the Wesley bicenten- 
nial, had become in 1906 The Life of John 
Wesley, one of the most successful and 
widely known of his books. When, as a 
young man, he was invited to lecture in Mid- 
dletown, and spoke in his delightfully inti- 
mate and conversational manner on London 
26 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

a Hundred Years Ago, illustrating his talk 
with crayon sketches made by Mrs. Win- 
chester, he achieved instant success, and be- 
gan a career of many years of lecturing. 
For such lecturing he was in constant de- 
mand by educational institutions, clubs, and 
other organizations. For more than a quar- 
ter of a century he gave annually a course of 
lectures at Wells College; and as a visiting 
lecturer he also gave various series at Johns 
Hopkins, Wisconsin, Northwestern, and 
other universities. 

In the varied activities and relationships 
as a member of the faculty, Professor Win- 
chester's services were given modestly but 
without stint. His fine spirit of courtesy 
and of consideration for others, his genial 
sense of humor, his abiding sense of fitness, 
his wise insight, broad outlook, and liberal- 
mindedness, tempered by his wide reading, 
earnest thinking, and long experience, ever 
commanded the admiration and affection of 
his colleagues, who always gave careful heed 
to his counsel in faculty and committee 
meetings, and who valued his confidence and 
advice in personal affairs. Throughout his 
membership in the faculty he was almost in- 
27 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

variably a member of the committees, 
whether regular or special, which dealt with 
questions of appointments and of curricu- 
lum, and other matters of academic policy. 
Owing to his effdrts the university under- 
took in 1889 the publishing of a semi-annual 
Bulletin^ and until his death he continued as 
chairman of the committee charged with 
editing it. For a long period of years he 
was also the chairman of the committee on 
public literary exercises, and gave ungrudg- 
ingly his services in meeting the manifold 
and tedious demands involved. His mem- 
bership on the library committee also con- 
tinued until his death, and was ever marked 
by a lively interest in all details affecting the 
upbuilding of that institution. 

When in 1901 a new hymnal was planned 
for the Methodist Episcopal Church, he was 
selected as a member of the first commission 
appointed for its preparation. And when, 
soon afterward, it was decided to have a 
joint commission representing the Method- 
ist Episcopal Church South as well, and a 
more comprehensive book, he was reap- 
pointed on this second commission, and 
played an important part in shaping that 

28 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

admirable collection of noble hymnology. 
The Methodist Hymnal, Meanwhile he was 
elected a lay representative to the General 
Conference of his church which met in Los 
Angeles in 1904, and was there appointed 
on a committee to revise the ritual of the 
church. He took an active interest in the 
music as well as in the literature of the 
hymnal. Of coaxing melodies and winning 
movements he was exceedingly fond, some- 
times jestingly acknowledging his suscepti- 
bility to certain favorites which he dubbed 
"pewee" tunes. To one of his colleagues he 
sent Dean Alf ord's stanza beginning. 

My bark is wafted to the strand 
By breath divine," 

accompanied by a penciled melody, and 
wrote: "Behold my first musical produc- 
tion ! A one-finger tune for one of the new 
hymns." This was one of the hymns sung 
at his funeral, set to this original music. In 
these matters of musical fitness his taste was 
unerring. Of a given tune he wrote, "I 

don't like ; it seems to me altogether too 

uproariously exultant — not solemn enough 

in its gladness." And when his lifelong 

29 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

friend, Professor "Ben" Gill, sent in an 
original tune for another favorite hymn. 

Come, let us join our friends above, 

he wrote: "I do think it is way ahead of 
anything yet. It is simple, noble, strong, 
yet with two or three plaintive strains in it. 
As Ben says, 'swell out on it, and see if you 
like it.' ... It sounds like Ben and all good 
old strong, true things — hke old times, and 
like the hope of better new times." In re- 
cent years he took much delight in his pia- 
nola, by means of which he familiarized him- 
self with many musical masterpieces. He 
would say, "Come over, and I'll pump you 
a lovely thing I've just bought." Or at the 
symphony concert he would lean over and 
remark about some bewitching number, 
"I've got that for my pianola." 

In all matters of political and civic nature. 
Professor Winchester took a keen and intel- 
ligent interest, and gave his voice and vote 
as one who loved righteousness and hated 
iniquity. Though he never took an active 
part in pubhc affairs, he was universally es- 
teemed as an ideal citizen. For many years 
he served faithfully as trustee and secretary 
30 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

of the Russell Library, the pubhc library of 
Middletown. 

Another of his idols in later life was the 
reorganized academy at Wilbraham, the 
scene of his early awakening to social and 
intellectual enthusiasms. With rare vision 
he saw the line of development that the old 
school must take, and as president of its 
new board of trustees witnessed before his 
death much of the fulfilment of his hopes. 

Always and everywhere Professor Win- 
chester was the courtly gentleman, the loyal 
friend, the thorough and discriminating 
scholar, the unique teacher, the fascinating 
conversationalist, the discerning critic, the 
lover of the beautiful and the good, the ear- 
nest and faithful Christian. His dignity 
and courtliness were not austerity, but gen- 
tility. Those fortunate enough to be his 
more intimate friends frequently marvelled 
at the genuine simplicity of his nature, at 
his often almost boyish glee over a new idea, 
new book, a bit of music, or a new story. His 
gift of humorous repartee was remarkable. 
"Cultivate a well-rounded, a globular char- 
acter," urged a speaker addressing the col- 
lege. "Evidently, then," remarked Winch, 
31 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

"the perfect character would be a pill!" 
Again, in suggesting a somewhat "lyrical" 
tune for a certain hymn, he wrote, "It's not 
unlike Lyons — I thought we might call it 
The Lady of Lyons; but as that might be 
rather secular, what think you of Lyonesse?" 
Repeatedly did he quote Chaucer's well- 
known line as expressing the ideal charac- 
teristics of a Christian gentleman, 

Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie. 

This ideal he exemplified in his life, seven 
days in the week, in his classroom, in faculty 
meeting, in his church, which he so devotedly 
supported, in the Conversational Club and 
the Apostles' Club, which he charmed with 
his papers and his conversation, as president 
of the local Phi Beta Kappa society, in civic 
duties, in private life. But his freedom of 
thought and of action, for himself and for 
his fellows, was no jelly-fish apathy toward 
error as the equal of truth. He would surely 
have approved a recent article in the Atlan- 
tic on the virtue of intolerance, though him- 
self most tolerant of others' opinions and 
beliefs. The change in undergraduate ideals 
he deeply deplored, believing that undue im- 
32 






BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

portance was attached to the athletic and 
the physical, and protesting that it was im- 
possible to teach English literature success- 
fully to students who knew neither the an- 
cient classics nor the English Bible. He 
often lamented in recent years that few stu- 
dents could intelligently read aloud a liter- 
ary passage. 

Devoted pupils everywhere beheve him 
the most generally beloved and widely ad- 
mired teacher that Wesleyan has ever had. 
Likewise they will not forget his deeply reli- 
gious character, his simple faith, and his 
daily life of Christian service. A favorite 
hymn of his, expressing excellently his firm 
conviction that Christianity should find ex- 
pression in every detail of daily life, and 
that one should avoid artificial distinctions 
between so-caUed "sacred" and "secular" af- 
fairs, was that familiar one originally writ- 
ten by George Herbert, and altered into 
more singable form by John Wesley, whose 
fourth stanza now reads : 

If done to obey thy laws, 

E'en servile labors shine; 
Hallowed is toil, if this the cause, 

The meanest work, divine, 

33 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

How often has he been heard to say that 
Herbert's original draft of this stanza, with 
its concrete, if homely, illustration, seemed 
to him fully as effective : 

A servant with this clause* 

Makes drudgery divine: 
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, 

Makes that and th' action fine. 

And the last stanza of another favorite hymn 
of his, by John EUerton, which he has so 
often given out in conducting chapel exer- 
cises, found exemplification in his hf e before 
God and man: 

Work shall be prayer, if aU be wrought 

As thou wouldst have it done; 
And prayer, by thee inspired and taught. 

Itself with work be one. 

Yet those who, year after year, experienced 
the inspiration and uphft of his devout 
prayers at chapel services reahzed that his 
was no rehgion of mere good works, but that 
he strove ever to teach the doctrine voiced 
in his own matchless educational hymn, 
originally written for the dedication of 
Orange Judd Hall of Natural Scien^j 

»"For thy sake." 

34 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

And let those learn, who here shall meet, 
True wisdom is with reverence crowned, 

And science walks with humble feet 

To seek the God that faith hath found. 

The very latest product of his pen to see 
the light consists of the prayers which ac- 
company two services in the recently pub- 
lished Chapel Service Book, One of them 
accompanies the hymn, a part of which has 
just been quoted, the Scripture passage se- 
lected to go with it being the ninety-fifth 
psalm. A single sentence in this prayer epit- 
omizes his religion: "Open thou our eyes 
that we may see thy wondrous works in earth 
and sea and sky; increase our faith that we 
may know thee a God not afar off but nigh 
unto each one of us; help us to yield our 
hearts in willing obedience to thy law, and 
our lives in loving devotion to thy service; 
all which we ask in the name of thy Son, our 
Saviour, Jesus Christ." 



35 



FIFTY YEARS OF PROFESSOR 
WINCHESTER 

By Stetson Kilbourne Ryan, '04* 

New England Methodism, and friends 
of the church elsewhere, will be interested 
in the approaching fiftieth anniversary of 
the graduation of the class of 1869 at Wes- 
leyan University, at Middletown, Connecti- 
cut, for it will point attention to the fact 
that another name — that of Professor Caleb 
Thomas Winchester, who was a member of 
this class — has been added to the honored 
group of men who have served upon the fac- 
ulty of their alma mater for half a century. 
In 1904 the late Professor John M. Van 
Vleck, a graduate of the class of 1850, who 
had served the university for fifty years upon 
its teaching force, and at intervals as acting 
president, was made professor emeritus, 
while only last June Professor William 
North Rice, for more than fifty years a mem- 
ber of the faculty, and at times acting presi- 
dent, retired from active teaching duties. 

* Reprinted by permission from ZiorCs Herald^ May 14, 
1919, with some minor alterations. 

36 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

Now Professor Winchester, who was chosen 
librarian at Wesleyan upon his graduation, 
is closing fifty years of noteworthy work at 
this oldest Methodist Episcopal collegiate 
institution in this country. 

In his essay on Hazlitt, we find Profes- 
sor Winchester asserting that "the years 
from fourteen to twenty-one are probably 
the determining period of every man's life." 
If that is true, the httle community of Mid- 
dleboro, Massachusetts, and its environs, 
which adjoin Plymouth, and the halls of 
the old academy at Wilbraham, Massachu- 
setts, and the inviting hillsides near by, left 
their impress upon the heart and life of this 
long-time Wesleyan professor. Although 
his father and his grandfather, upon his 
father's side, were Methodist ministers, it 
was not alone in a Methodist parsonage that 
he received his boyhood training. When the 
lad was eight years old his father was sta- 
tioned as preacher in Middleboro and moved 
his family to a small farm in that town, which 
his wife had inherited, and which remained 
the family home for ten years. His mater- 
nal grandmother's name was Le Baron, and 
she was fifth in line from Dr. Francis Le 
37 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Baron, a surgeon in a French privateer 
wrecked off the coast of Buzzard's Bay, who 
died in 1704, and was buried on Burial Hill 
in Plymouth. In her book, The Nameless 
Nobleman, Mrs. Mary Austin of Concord 
has set forth this event in fiction. At what 
is now Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1635, 
the Winchester side of the family settled in 
this country. It was thus within a short dis- 
tance of the abode of his ancestors that the 
boy spent his early youth. 

In his classes in English literature at Wes- 
leyan, the writer has heard Professor Win- 
chester say, in one of those dehghtf ul digres- 
sions which illumine all of his lectures, that 
some of the characters in Mary E. Wilkins's 
books made him think of his home folk. At 
any rate, the young man was acquiring a 
workable knowledge of human nature as he 
moved among these shrewd, thrifty Yankees, 
that was to stand him in good stead in later 
years in his life work. One of the surest 
holds that Professor Winchester has upon 
the young men in his classes and upon the 
public, in his lectures, is the extraordinary 
insight that he has into human actions and 
motives, and the unusual common sense, hu- 
38 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

man sympathy, and perception of propor- 
tion with which he presents the subject 
matter. 

Life upon the farm also found him lay- 
ing up a goodly store of robust health, so 
that in later life he did not feel the need of 
athletic activities. Farms in that region in 
those days needed no little coaxing, and life 
in the open also found the young man learn- 
ing how to use his hands. There was a good 
academy in Middleboro, from which he en- 
tered Wesleyan Academy at Wilbraham for 
his last year of preparatory study, and there 
he, from the outset, took high rank. The in- 
spiration of those days has not been dimmed 
by passing years. When we find him pay- 
ing tender tribute, many years later, at the 
funeral services of his friend, the late Ben- 
jamin Gill, at Wilbraham, there wells up 
spontaneously in the generous, genuine 
words of the speaker the ineffaceable mem- 
ory of the schoolboy days at Wilbraham. 
His loyalty to the school has been outstand- 
ing, and at the present time he is the presi- 
dent of the board of trustees. 

When the young man came to Wesleyan, 
in the fall of 1865, "a long, lean, lank, white- 
39 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

haired duffer," as he puts it, he found the 
massive, energetic, and forceful Joseph 
Cununings serving as president, the lovable 
Dr. John Johnston just bringing to a close 
his splendid years of service in the depart- 
ment of natural science, the brilhant Fales 
Henry Newhall serving in the department 
of rhetoric and English literature. Rev. Cal- 
vin Sears Harrington in Latin, with James 
Cooke Van Benschoten as his colleague in 
Greek, John Monroe Van Vleck as pro- 
fessor of mathematics, and Wilham North 
Rice about to start upon what was to be a 
career of marked success. President Cum- 
mings was just in the middle period of his 
term of office, which resulted so auspiciously 
for Wesleyan in the addition of needed 
buildings. The importance of physical sci- 
ence was coming to be recognized and the 
college curriculum was being broadened by 
the influence of the younger men hke Pro- 
fessors Van Vleck and Rice. Those were 
stirring days, and it was good to be alive. 

The class of 1869 sent twenty-seven 

young men out from the college halls. It 

was a worthy class. George Edward Reed 

later became president of Dickinson Col- 

40 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

lege, and Tamerlane Pliny Marsh of Mount 
Union College. Henry Smith Carhart was 
for many years professor of physics at the 
University of Michigan and now, professor 
emeritus, is living at Pasadena, California/ 
Wilbur Fisk Crafts has been long promi- 
nent in reform work, while the late Joseph 
Dame Weeks served as associate editor of 
the Iron Age and visited Europe as special 
commissioner of Pennsylvania to investigate 
the labor question in 1878. Others proved 
themselves worthy sons of their alma mater. 
Generations of Wesleyan men know Pro- 
fessor Winchester as the always popular 
and entertaining head of the department of 
English literature. While he served the uni- 
versity as librarian for sixteen years, from 
1869 to 1885, he was elected to a full profes- 
sorship in 1873, when he was not yet twenty- 
seven years old ; which shows that this is not 
the only age which seeks the men of youth 
for positions of large responsibihty. Since 
1890 his department has been English hter- 
ature alone, in which he holds the Olin pro- 
fessorship, named in honor of the late Ste- 
phen Olin, the second president of the uni- 

* Professor Carhart died February 13, 1920. 

41 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

versity. In 1880 he studied in Leipzig for 
a year and he has spent periods of sabbati- 
cal leave in travel since. In 1892 Dickinson 
College made him a doctor of humane let- 
ters. For more than twenty-five years he 
delivered lectures at Wells College, in New 
York state, and Johns Hopkins has been 
served by him in a Uke capacity for several 
years, as have many of the New England 
colleges. In 1904 he served on the commit- 
tee for revision of The Methodist Hymnal. 
The church has also honored him by electing 
him lay delegate to the General Conference 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1904. 
It is an open secret that other universities 
have tried to inveigle Professor Winchester 
away from Wesleyan. When the late Pres- 
ident William R. Harper was gathering a 
group of eminent scholars to serve as the 
faculty of the reorganized University of 
Chicago, he invited Wesleyan's scholarly 
and popular head of the English literature 
department to take a similar position in that 
institution. The offer was declined, for 
which Professor Winchester has had the 
abiding gratitude of all friends of the col- 
lege. Other offers were given less pubhc- 
42 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

ity, but were met with the same decision to 
remain at his ahna mater. 

Professor Winchester has not written 
primarily as an author with a reading pubhc 
in view. He has seemed to prefer to keep 
the best that he has for his classes and his 
pubhc lectures. His Five Short Courses of 
Reading, pubhshed in 1891 and revised in 
1900, has met with wide recognition. Prin- 
ciples of Literary Criticism, set up in 1899, 
has been reprinted repeatedly. Following 
the Wesley bicentennial he wrote The Life 
of John Wesley, which was an entertaining 
depiction of the hf e and work of the man in 
Professor Winchester's characteristic style. 
With Professor G. L. Kittredge he edited 
the AthencBum Press Series of masterpieces 
of English literature. A Group of English 
Essayists appeared in 1910. In 1873 he 
served as editor of the Wesley an Alumni 
Record, His history of the university and 
many intimate papers and sketches of par- 
ticular interest to the alumni and friends of 
the university are prized beyond measure 
by those who possess them. 

But it is the man himself who has lived 
his way into the affection and esteem of large 

43 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

numbers of Wesley an men. Seldom does 
the undergraduate stop to reckon why he 
likes one professor, or dislikes another. 
There is some subtle instinct that pervades 
a college body, that weighs the members of 
the faculty in the balance. Some measure 
up to the rather vague and unexpressed 
standard which the college man demands, 
while others do not. Given a little time and 
a fair chance and the undergraduates will 
generally discover a man, be he hedged about 
with ever so many peculiarities. Professor 
Winchester was judged at this bar of col- 
lege opinion many years ago — and met all 
the requirements. Each succeeding group 
of students has accepted him without ques- 
tion. 

It is probably because he understands 
men. Ever since he was an impressionable 
lad, learning to size up a situation with true 
Yankee shrewdness, he has been noting their 
whims, reading the deep, strong motives of 
the heart, and seeing what quaUties of mind 
and spirit lead to success. We find him re- 
marking in his paper on Thomas De Quin- 
cey that the essayist "had an almost femi- 
nine nicety of observation that nothing 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

escaped, and a quick eye for those slight pecu- 
liarities of appearance and manner in which 
character unconsciously reveals itself." One 
who was not so well versed in human nature 
himself would not have noted this with such 
care for detail. This practice is delightfully 
refreshing, and the pleased reader finds the 
personality of the literary personage living 
and breathing in his very presence. Open 
at random to almost any page of his essays 
and you find him investing his subject with 
an interest that springs from his art of 
knowing men. Thus we find him writing of 
De Quincey: "A sort of Admirable Crich- 
ton, he did nothing with his knowledge, he 
reached no conclusions, he settled no ques- 
tions, marked out no new paths for human 
thought; and the large familiar elements of 
life out of which great literature is made, 
man's love and hope and desire, still less 
to these could he give such expression as 
shall thrill or inspire. He could only gos- 
sip; curious, usually interesting, sometimes 
instructive, it was still gossip — gossip 
through fourteen stricken volumes." 

The writer will never forget the enter- 
taining hours in the classroom. There were 
45 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

no dull moments in his classes. With quiet 
dignity the teacher was willing to speak 
much — and the men were willing to let him. 
He knew so much about Hfe and men and 
things, and he could tell it with such com- 
pelling interest, that every man listened. 
There was no fault-finding, imphed or 
stated, in his presentation of the facts. They 
came simply pouring out in low tones, al- 
most sad at times, clothed in the choicest 
language, but so spoken that no one could 
fail to get an intimate knowledge of what he 
desired to present. 

Somehow, some of us were quick to con- 
clude that the warm, tender spirit of the poet 
Burns had won the place of warmest affec- 
tion in the heart of our professor. He never 
said so, to be siu*e, but one had but to hsten 
to his lectures on the Scottish bard. He was 
always going out of his way, it seemed, with 
kindly interest, to state a mitigating circum- 
stance, or to suggest an interpretation of the 
poet's actions which softened the harshness 
of the critics. We learned to love Burns 
ourselves under such sympathetic tutelage. 

He read much to us. We listened, en- 
tranced. Some of us will never forget that 
46 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

voice. The quiet, low melody, the sympathy 
that weUed up and poured itself out, always 
with the nicest modulation, and never in 
false terms, led us, somehow, unthinkingly, 
to conclude that here was a man who under- 
stood us all, and who could read the human 
heart with as good understanding as he could 
the printed page. And that, perhaps, was 
why we liked him. 

Like aU the best judges of human nature, 
Professor Winchester gives high place to 
the value of cheerfulness and genuine laugh- 
ter. He says much about it in his writings 
and his lectures. Thus we find him speaking 
of Charles Lamb: *'His laughter was not 
like the crackling of thorns under a pot, but 
genial, kindly, wise. He knew how by a 
jest, a waggish remark, half drollery and 
half sympathy, to break up the crust of com- 
monplace that gathers over our thought, to 
enliven the lead-colored monotony that 
makes life toilsome and — what is worse — 
prosaic." 

Most college men have written some verse 

in their college days, which they rue in later 

life. No lines of his appear in the collection 

entitled "Wesleyan Verse," except the 

47 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

chaste words of introduction to the volume, 
which were written by him at the request of 
the editors. In The Methodist Hymnal 
only one hymn is credited to him: 

The Lord our God alone is strong; 

His hands build not for one brief day; 
His wondrous works, through ages long, 

His wisdom and his power display. 

It is this song that voices, perhaps, in the 
best way, the strong, composite faith of the 
man. There is no cant in his acceptance of 
God. He believes because he sees God man- 
ifest all about him. He does not say much 
about his behef. Somehow, you know it is 
there without the spoken word. 

Professor Winchester has probably had 
more Wesleyan men in his classes than any 
other member of the faculty, now or in the 
past. His elective courses have been very 
popular, and deservedly so. His testimony, 
now that he looks back upon these long years 
of success as a teacher, is that he prizes most 
the personal friendship which has come to 
him through his intercourse with his classes. 
Only the other day he told the writer that 
he had received a letter from Bishop Her- 
48 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

bert Welch, out in Korea. It was not about 
business, or affairs of the church, but just 
a chatty talk about the old days at Wes- 
leyan. And that is what he prizes. 

Middletown has been Professor Winches- 
ter's home for more than fifty years now. 
Indeed, he has known no other home, save 
Wilbraham and the hilly region near Plym- 
outh for a few years in his early boyhood. 
He has learned to love the college town. 
His home, well up the rise from the city's 
main thoroughfare, looks off toward the hills 
upon the other side of the Connecticut river. 
There, old Cobalt mountain lifts its blue and 
hazy crest, and gives rest of body and spirit 
to those who look away over the city's house- 
tops to its somber summit. It is a good out- 
look, that inspires to hope and faith and trust 
in things as they are. Professor Winches- 
ter is held in esteem by the townspeople, and 
at the First Methodist Episcopal Church, 
of which he is one of the helpful members. 
Middletown, its citizens, its church mem- 
bers, as well as the college community, ap- 
preciate this long-time Wesleyan professor. 



49 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

At the twilight hour, Wednesday of last 
week,' Professor Caleb Thomas Winches- 
ter, a member of the faculty of Wesleyan 
University, Middletown, Connecticut, since 
1869, passed to the other life. Death came 
as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage, which 
occurred about three months since, but from 
which he had been slowly rallying until two 
weeks before his death, when there came a 
relapse, and he began gradually to fail. He 
is survived by his wife and one son, Julian 
Caleb Winchester ; a sister. Miss L. Fannie 
Winchester of Fair Haven, Massachusetts; 
and a brother, George Fletcher Winchester 
of Paterson, New Jersey. 

The funeral was held at the Winchester 
home, on the edge of the campus, Saturday 
afternoon. Rev. William D. Beach, D.D., 
the retiring pastor of the First Methodist 
Episcopal Church of Middletown, of which 
the deceased had been a member since his 
undergraduate days, was the officiating 
clergyman. Dr. Beach was assisted by 
President William Arnold Shanklin of the 
University, while Professor William North 

^ The following paragraphs, also written by Mr. Ryan, ap- 
peared in Zions Herald, March 31, 1920. 

50 



BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS 

Rice, who was beginning his work on the 
Wesleyan faculty when Professor Winches- 
ter came there as a student and who is now 
professor emeritus, conducted the committal 
service at the cemetery. A quartet com- 
posed of glee club men from the University 
sang. The honorary bearers were Profes- 
sor George M. Dutcher, vice-president of 
the University; Professor Frank W. Nicol- 
son, the University dean; and Professors 
Morris B. Crawford, Andrew C. Arm- 
strong, William E. Mead, Karl P. Har- 
rington, WiUiam J. James, and Oscar 
Kuhns, senior members of the faculty who, 
in nearly every instance, have been associ- 
ated with Professor Winchester on the Wes- 
leyan faculty for more than a quarter of a 
century. The active bearers were from the 
student body of the Wesleyan chapter of 
the Psi Upsilon fraternity, of which Pro- 
fessor Winchester was a member. The bur- 
ial was in the family lot in Indian Hill cem- 
etery in Middletown. 

Professor Winchester had asked the Wes- 
leyan trustees to relieve him of his work 
as head of the department of English liter- 
ature at their meeting last June. He was 
51 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

then completing half a century of faculty 
service at this oldest Methodist Episcopal 
collegiate institution in America. The mem- 
bers of the board asked him to continue in 
office for the present, possibly for not longer 
than another year, and he had cheerfully ac- 
quiesced. It was not long after the open- 
ing of college last fall that he broke imder 
the strain. It was a great shock to his 
friends, who had not realized that the stress 
was so great. 

The First Methodist Episcopal Church of 
Middletown, of which he was a long-time 
member, has lost a staunch supporter in his 
going. The city where he had made his 
home for more than half a century mourns 
also one of its best type of citizens. All over 
the country, wherever Wesleyan is known 
and loved, in fact, there will be a genuine 
sense of loss in the passing of this honored 
professor, for it was the sincere wish of many 
that he might long be spared to the univer- 
sity community where he had served usefully 
and conspicuously for these fifty years. 



52 



DINNER 

IN HONOR OF 
PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

June 20, 1919 



Wesleyan University 
Victory Commencement 



Binner in Honor 
o{ 
Profeggot Caleb tCliomag Wint^t^itx, I. 



FayerweatLer Gymnasium 
June Twentieth, Nineteen Nineteen 



55 



Program 



President William Arnold Shanklin, L. H. D., LL. D. 



Wilbur Lucius Cross, Ph. D. 

Dean of tke Gra<]uate ScLool, Yale University 



Lincoln Robinson Gibbs, M. A. 

Professor of Englisk Literature, University of PittsburgK 



William Edward Mead, PL. D. 



William Nortb Rice, Pb.D., LL. D. 



Caleb Tbomas Wincbester, L. H. D. 



57 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 

President Shanklin 

Though my province is simply to intro- 
duce the speakers of the evening, I cannot 
refrain from expressing my own personal 
appreciation of Professor Winchester and 
of his constant, sympathetic loyalty and up- 
holding. Throughout these ten years since 
I came to Wesleyan he has been an ideal col- 
league, never flinching from a frank expres- 
sion of his own views, yet never failing in 
loyalty to the president of the college. I 
owe him an incalculable debt. To share his 
friendship has stirred afresh my best re- 
solves for high living and noble thinking. 
With every Wesleyan man I thank God for 
this teacher who has let loose such intellec- 
tual and moral forces on this hill, and who 
has for half a century here spent himself in 
the moulding and mastery of young men. 

I was struck forcibly, the other day, by 

a word of the late John Muir: "Longest is 

the life that contains the largest amount of 

time-effacing enjoyment and of work that 

59 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

is steady delight." What a lesson Profes- 
sor Winchester has, through the years, daily 
taught in his grasping the Uttle section of 
existence that the philosophers have such 
diflSculty in defining, and living it to the best 
of his abiUty for steady dehght, "an image of 
high principle and feeling." 

As we think of the various and combined 
influences that make Wesleyan what it is, 
it seems to me that Professor Winchester 
is the personification of the best for which 
Wesleyan is known among her friends. In 
meeting alumni throughout the entire coun- 
try, I hear men express their gratitude for 
his benign and stimulating influence upon 
them while in college. And each of this 
great company of Wesleyan men and women 
greets you, sir; looks you frankly in the face, 
and says to you in tones and smiles, if not 
in words: I love you because you have in- 
spired in me a desire to be my best, and to 
make my Uf e more and more like your own, 
one in which faith and work are bells of full 
accord. 

We want you to know that Wesleyan men 
love you for your charm of simple truthful- 
ness^ of frank manliness, of perfect sympa- 



DINNER 

thy for all forms of healthy human action, 
independently of the position which you have 
held for so many years, and which has had 
its real being in your personality itself. 

We know how you love Wesleyan, how 
you have baptized it with your prayers and 
deeds, how filled you have been with devices 
for its welfare, how jealous of its fair name, 
how willing to spend and be spent in its be- 
half. I believe that you could say, sir, to 
the innermost and to the uttermost: **If I 
forget thee, O Wesleyan, let my right hand 
forget her cunning and let my tongue cleave 
to the roof of my mouth." 

And as we this evening call to mind your 
earnestness and simplicity of nature, your 
force of character, your temper of greatness 
— all shot through with your life-devotion 
to this college — we pray God that something 
of your spirit may ever abide in Wesleyan 
University. 



61 



ADDRESS 

in behalf of the departments of english 

in new england colleges and 

universities 

Professor Cross 

We all account it an honor to be of this 
companye, as Dan Chaucer would say were 
he with us, met "to doon oure observaunce" 
to this June day when Professor Winches- 
ter completeth his fifty years of service in 
the two arts of teaching and writing. That 
this work has been done at Wesleyan has 
brought great distinction to the University. 
Many of you are Professor Winchester's 
former students, while I have never had the 
privilege of attending his classes. I am just 
one of his many friends. Still, I know what 
he has given you at Wesleyan, for I have 
read his books, which, if I am not mistaken, 
have been largely wrought out of the very 
substance of his lectures. And one of those 
lectures I once heard. It was far back in 
the abysm of time, perhaps as many as 
thirty-five years ago, when I was an under- 
62 



DINNER 

graduate at Yale. Professor Winchester 
gave an address in New Haven, before the 
Phi Beta Kappa Society, I think, on Lud- 
low Castle, where Milton's Comus, with 
music by Henry Lawes, was first performed 
at a splendid entertainment given by the 
Earl of Bridgewater, Lord President of 
Wales. I do not remember, at this distance 
of time, the details of that address. All I 
remember is that it was rich in description 
and in literary and historical incident, and 
that it thrilled me. 

It was ten years after this address that 
Professor Winchester and I first met 
in conversation. We were on a transatlan- 
tic steamer, bound westward from Glasgow 
to New York. You all know how easy it is 
to get acquainted on shipboard. Ten days 
there wiU do the business of ten years on 
land, where we all try to conceal what we 
are by reserves and conventions. There 
were also several special reasons why Pro- 
fessor Winchester and I were thrown 
much together on that voyage. As we were 
both very poor men then, we were travehng 
on a small boat which undertook to convey 
first-class passengers across the Atlantic 
63 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

for $40 a head. For myself, I had not con- 
sidered what a cheap west-bound passage 
meant, especially if late in the season, as 
was ours. That steamer was filled with the 
riff-raff of American tourists, who had spent 
all their money in Europe, except what they 
had reserved for drink and play on the voy- 
age home. And to say the truth, they had 
reserved a sufficient amount for these pur- 
poses. Perhaps the two most respectable 
persons on board, Professor Winchester and 
I naturally sought each other's company. 
Again, we happened to have rooms near 
together, which was conducive to night talk. 
We also ran into a dreadful storm while 
in mid-ocean. We were all ordered below, 
the engines would not work, the boats, it 
was rumored, were being lowered, and 
the ship rolled about helplessly — of this 
we were certain — in a tumult of waters. I 
can still hear that shout of Professor Win- 
chester's on a dark midnight when the storm 
was at its height, as he called across to me to 
get up and dress, so as to be ready for the 
boats. We sat and talked for a while amid 
the music of the storm and the crash of 
crockery, and then we turned in again, hav- 
64 



DINNER 

ing decided to meet coolly, though not gaily, 
our fate. At length the hurricane subsided, 
and we escaped a wet grave with that mis- 
erable crowd. 

The story of what Professor Winchester 
accomplished for English studies before and 
after this abortive disaster, I cannot relate 
here. I can only throw upon it a sidelight 
or two. Are we aware, I wonder, that this 
half -century of Professor Winchester's ca- 
reer covers nearly the entire period of Eng- 
lish studies, apart from philology and com- 
position, in American schools and colleges? 
He entered upon his work somewhat later 
than Child of Harvard, along with Louns- 
bury and Beers of Yale. These are the four 
pioneers who blazed the trail. Before their 
time English literature as literature was 
rarely in the curriculum of school or college. 
A graduate of Yale in the class of 1859 once 
remarked to me that during his four years 
in college he never heard an instructor men- 
tion the name of Tennyson or Browning or 
Shakespeare or Milton, and he was listen- 
ing for those names. English literature, so 
far as it had crept into educational pro- 
grams, had come mainly through manuals, 
65 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

which gave brief biographies of a multitude 
of authors followed by descriptions, some- 
times in smaller type, of their principal 
works. Instances seem to be rare where 
students were asked to read anything that 
an author had actually written — certainly 
anything more than an extract or a speci- 
men. I need not tell you that condensed 
lives of hterary men and hsts of their books 
with formal comment thereon by mediocre 
intelligences are neither very profitable nor 
very entertaining. Not only were these 
books read, but students — especially girls in 
their * 'finishing schools" — were required to 
commit much of them to memory, for it was 
a period when great stress was placed upon 
training the juvenile mind to exact repro- 
duction. Only the other evening a student 
of those days, somewhat more independent 
than the rest, was telling me that he once 
ventured to give to his professor the sub- 
stance of a paragraph rather than the para- 
graph itself. His professor, who was the 
author of the paragraph, listened for a min- 
ute or two, and then told the young man 
to sit down, adding, "The words of the book 
were chosen with the very greatest care, and 
66 



DINNER 

I advise you not to try to improve upon 
them." 

It may be that this professor's paragraph 
would stand any test that might be brought 
to bear upon it, but the case was quite dif- 
ferent with some text-books then in use, of 
which the one then regarded as the best for 
students in Enghsh was called A Complete 
Manual of English Literature, by Thomas 
B. Shaw, M.A., a graduate of Cambridge 
University. The book is nothing but a com- 
pilation; it contains no firsthand apprecia- 
tion of English authors; it gives merely a 
confused reflection of estimates by others; 
examine it where you will and you can find 
no positive evidence that Shaw had ever 
read any of the books he mentioned, but you 
will find in his inaccuracies positive evidence 
that he had never read the longer and more 
important ones. The inference of Professor 
Lounsbury is justified that Shaw had never 
read throughout any of the numerous novels, 
plays, essays, and poems that he described. 
This was the book that girls took to their 
rooms, pored over, and committed to mem- 
ory, thinking that they were studying our 
great and glorious literature. 
67 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Such was the situation when the real pio- 
neers appeared in the wilderness. They took 
their students directly to the great works of 
the great writers — to Chaucer and Spenser 
and Shakespeare and Milton, and eventu- 
ally, forward into the nineteenth century, to 
Tennyson and Browning. Within a decade 
or two their method had permeated our 
whole educational system. There was doubt- 
less some stumbling at the outset, and there 
has certainly been some stumbling since by 
the successors of the pioneers. It has always 
been a question what to do with an author 
like Shakespeare when we have got hold of 
him. Some have thought that the thing 
should be grammar under the name of phi- 
lology. In the 'seventies there was running 
in a college that shall be nameless here a 
course in Shakespeare, in which the stu- 
dents read Hamlet and parsed all the most 
obscure sentences in that tragedy. Some 
years ago I asked a man who had taken that 
course whether he remembered any specific 
questions that were put to him. "Yes," he 
said, "the professor was always talking 
about the elusive relative pronoun in Shake- 
speare, meaning thereby as'' It is true that 
68 



DINNER 

one may find elusive relatives, as well as 
elusive graces, in Shakespeare. Sir Hugh 
Evans says to the fairies in Merry Wives: 

But those as sleep and think not on their sins, 
Pinch them. . . . 

The course contained nothing remotely lit- 
erary except a debate at the end on the ques- 
tion whether Hamlet was mad, the conclu- 
sion being that Hamlet must have been out 
of his head, for had he been a normal young 
man he would not have been so rough with 
Ophelia. 

The grammarians have had companions 
in the etymologists, the lineal descendants of 
Pope's "word-catchers," who under the in- 
fluence of Archbishop Trench brought in 
the picturesque history of words, such as 
roue, now used to designate a man of "prof- 
ligate character," but anciently and more 
properly meaning a man "wheeled, or broken 
on the wheel" for his crimes. To my shame 
I once consented to conduct a class of boys 
and girls through one of these books. There 
were also the antiquarians, who pounced 
upon Shakespeare and Milton for biblical, 
classical, and historical allusions, explain- 

m 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

ing away, as a boy once put it, every "illu- 
sion" in the great Puritan poet. And there 
are the analytic gentlemen, not quite so com- 
mon now as formerly, who set their students 
to counting the words in each sentence of an 
author in order to strike his average and 
compare his average with the average of 
somebody else. 

Another group of scholars, calling them- 
selves students in comparative literature, 
still roam about in "the happy hunting- 
ground" of parallel passages. When they 
light upon a passage like 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
Are sweeter. . . . 

they wonder where the deuce Keats got that. 
The rhetoricians came in, too, with their for- 
mal treatises, made over from Whately ; and 
young men learned to their disappointment 
that they lost rather than gained facility in 
writing by reading A. S. Hill on purity, 
clearness, force, and ease. It was then that 
the late Professor Lounsbury made the hu- 
morous remark: "Just as a man who hasn't 
enough money to found a college founds a 
university, so a man who hasn't brains 
70 



DINNER 

enough to write a grammar writes a rhet- 
oric." 

I have been preparing, you observe, a foil 
like the tin and quicksilver on the back of a 
looking-glass, so that one may see Profes- 
sor Winchester properly reflected as he is. 
I would not say a word which might be con- 
strued as in the least disrespectful of gram- 
mar, rhetoric, etymology, the running down 
of allusions, or the detection of an author's 
thefts under the name of sources. In and 
of themselves they are all legitimate enough, 
but their pursuit has very little if anything 
to do with literature; and when they are 
more than casually introduced into literary 
study, they call attention from the really 
essential things; they switch the mind to a 
sidetrack which it is hard to leave. Now, 
Professor Winchester in none of his books 
ever admits these or other distractions. He 
concentrates attention upon the poet or es- 
sayist in hand (he best likes poets and essay- 
ists), and he never lets go of him and his 
work until the light and fervor of an appre- 
ciative intelligence has been turned on from 
many sides. Some of the questions he asks 
are: what does the man say and what is it 
71 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

worth; what emotions does he awaken and 
are they true or false; and what of the man's 
art in its larger reaches? This is the general 
trend of his rare powers of literary interpre- 
tation. For historical background per se 
whereby an author may be displayed as the 
product of his age or the working out of 
social forces he cares httle; and yet with a 
due sense of proportion he always provides 
a sufHcient background for understanding, 
delight, and just appreciation. Nor does 
Professor Winchester run into irrelevant 
biographical details. He has written one 
admirable biography, and he calls it by its 
right name. But when he brings biography 
into a literary study, it does not stand alone, 
an impertinent thing; there is always an in- 
terplay between the incidents of an author's 
life and his personality as seen in his works. 
At length emerges a charming portrait like 
that of Charles Lamb. Herein lies Pro- 
fessor Winchester's distinction. Through 
his long career he has pursued none of those 
wandering fires which really neither warm 
nor illumine, but merely lead into phosphor- 
escent quagmires. His endeavor has been to 
awaken in others his own great love of that 
72 



DINNEE 

English literature which is the glory of the 
modern world. 

And what has been the secret of his suC' 
cess? Professor Winchester is not one of 
those popular lecturers who can build an 
address on the foundation of a few hours' 
reading. With certain periods of our liter- 
ature his mind is thoroughly saturated, and 
he confines himself to those periods. To 
him the primal element in literature is emo- 
tion, and he rather dislikes those books where 
many facts intrude to break up the emotion. 
Always the emotional charm of a favorite 
author becomes a part of his own personal- 
ity ; and then by his zest and vibrant style he 
conveys it all to his audience or readers. 
Those of you who have read his books must 
remember his comment on the wonderful 
sonnet by Shakespeare, beginning, 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold, 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang 

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold. 
Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds 
sang. 

Or perhaps you would rather have me recall, 

out of local pride, a scene transfused with 

73 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

emotion, which Professor Winchester de- 
scribes from his study window here in Mid- 
dletown on a day of early autumn, wherein 
he first observes in the middle distance a 
tree in the "gorgeous hues of copper and 
gold" and then uplifts his eyes over "the 
whole broad-lying landscape" — "the long, 
high horizon line, rising just in front of me 
into the broadly rounded solidity of a moun- 
tain; the russet-clad slopes of the eastern 
hills that border a river; the broad expanse 
of the river, lying hke a quiet lake, bluer 
by far than the sky overhead ; sfoping fields, 
dotted here and there with farmhouses ; and 
below and in front the roofs of the city 
among the fast thinning foliage of the trees." 
And on this beautiful prospect he lets his 
imagination dwell until the mountain beyond 
the Connecticut fades into the mountain he 
once saw from Wordsworth's house and on 
into the Mount Soracte of which his beloved 
Horace sang. 

A man who writes like this is not only an 
inspiring guide to the greater poets and es- 
sayists; he is himself a maker of literature. 



74 



ADDRESS 



IN BEHALF OF PROFESSOR WINCHESTERS 
PUPILS 

Professor Gibbs, '92 

The present occasion vindicates the bu- 
colic adage that soon or late all chickens 
come home to roost. The particular fowl 
that seeks the domestic perch this evening 
is a highly respectable bird, with a sugges- 
tion of aristocratic pedigree; but in view of 
the special object of this gathering, its re- 
turn causes some embarrassment. I mean 
that here at Wesleyan we are taught by pre- 
cept and example that one of the capital 
secrets of power in expression is reserve, 
and that this principle is especially perti- 
nent to the expression of personal affection, 
loyalty, and devotion. This is an instruc- 
tion that returns to-night to plague, per- 
haps not the inventor, but certainly those 
of his pupils who attempt to put in words 
their gratitude and admiration. The resort 
of the bashful lover is to talk about the 
weather, trusting that by some magic of 
75 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

suggestion he may impart the real state of 
his soul ; and if his audience is a sympathetic 
one, this indirect way of speaking is as elo- 
quent and persuasive as any other. Talk- 
ing as the representative of many hundreds 
of Professor Winchester's pupils, I have as 
principal object the expression of the live- 
liest gratitude and the most genuine admira- 
tion. But I cannot speak directly to this 
point. I must take a leaf from the bashful 
lover's book, and deal directly only with 
some almost impersonal and academic phases 
of the teaching of literature in this Univer- 
sity ; and I must ask you to listen for a word 
that is above and beneath the words I may 
utter, a connotation, an overtone, that may 
speak of something in Professor Winches- 
ter's instruction and influence quite too inti- 
mately blended with the intellectual and 
moral life of us sons of Wesleyan to be iso- 
lated, phrased, or even fully recognized. 

A saying of the critic Taine may serve as 
a touchstone for disclosing the nature of this 
influence as related to the needs of stu- 
dents whom Professor Winchester serves. 
"Sooner or later," said Taine, "every intel- 
lectual worker must make his peace with 
76 



DINNER 

science." For more than thirty years the 
besetting temptation of teachers in non-sci- 
entific fields has been to make a peace of 
total surrender. A teacher of English may 
make this surrender in several ways : he may 
confine his attention to the mechanism of 
expression, to the natural-history of lan- 
guage, or to the measurable political and 
social forces that influence the history of lit- 
erature. He may even yield to the convic- 
tion that Hterature itself is only a branch 
or an adjunct of science. Now, though no 
sane person denies the benefits that both lit- 
erature and the teaching of literature have 
gained from the influence of science, no one 
who understands the educational role of lit- 
erature desires that it be taught as a science. 
To be utterly scientific is to deal exclusively 
with ideas and objects that are exactly meas- 
urable. Literature deals with matters too 
closely akin to the human spirit itself to be 
even approximately measurable. To at- 
tempt to quantify it is to falsify it, or at best 
to omit the element that constitutes its 
unique life. The attempt to apply a scien- 
tific method to an inappropriate subject 
matter defeats itself and becomes unscien- 
77 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

tific. In the meantime the educational val- 
ues of literature have been sacrificed. In 
the face of the large claims of science to sat- 
isfy every spiritual need, to provide a scien- 
tific morality, a scientific art, and a scientific 
religion, the department of literature at 
Wesleyan has had the courage to be in suffi- 
cient measure non-scientific, to respect the 
peculiar character of its subject, never to 
confuse between ends and means in instruc- 
tion and scholarship, and to furnish in the 
person of its head a conspicuous example of 
the humanizing results of literary culture. 

One is aware that the scientific danger has 
its counterpart. Sentimentahsm is more 
odious than pedantry. Occasionally even a 
writer of the first rank becomes a victim of 
this infatuation. Keats lamented the fact 
that Newton, by demonstrating the laws of 
the refraction of light, had robbed the rain- 
bow of its beauty and enrolled it in the dull 
catalogue of common things. The correc- 
tives of sentimentahty are a respect for 
facts and a sense of humor. Students of the 
imaginative arts are grateful to the scientific 
spirit for some measure of the former, 
though they are not wholly dependent on 
78 



DINNER 

the example of the professional scientist for 
it. The sense of humor they find growing 
in considerable abundance on their own es- 
tate. Here at Wesleyan we are taught to 
prize chiefly, not the authors who speak from 
romantic distances or transcendental heights, 
but those who talk, like good Methodists, 
from experience. We turn the pages of 
Shelley, but v/e lay to heart the wisdom of 
Shakespeare, Burns, Wordsworth, and 
Browning. Our sophomoric raptures and 
giddy flights into the intense inane are 
checked by demands for homely instances. 
We are made to recognize the wise laughter 
of the mind that Meredith talks about. If 
any of us lack the due measure of intellec- 
tual vigor and realism, we cannot ascribe 
the defect to our preceptor in literature. He 
leads us to discern in poetry a subtle logic; 
he causes us to value most the poetry that 
has assimilated a heavy burden of tragic, 
grim, and even sordid facts, and has become 
wise as well as brilliant, exquisite, or gay. 

Is it possible to define positively the ideal 

that controls the teaching of literature in 

this college? The nearest approach to such 

a definition was made by Professor Win- 

79 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Chester in reply to a student's question put 
to him by one of my classmates. The ques- 
tion was one of those vague inquiries that 
inadvertently reveal the complacent inno- 
cent egotism of youth — whether the motive 
for reading great masters of prose should 
not be the improvement of the student's own 
style. As if Swift, Carlyle, Thackeray, and 
the rest were primarily models of English 
composition for young collegians with a bur- 
den — some message to dehver to the ages! 
The reply was patient. It declared the ob- 
ject of reading to be a sympathetic under- 
standing, not merely of the ideas of the au- 
thor, but of his total spirit in its unity and 
life. In such wise, according to our capac- 
ity, are we taught to read at Wesleyan. The 
unit of study is not the book, the literary 
form, the hnguistic medium, nor even the 
period or the cultural trend, but the mind of 
the author, the man. Literary style is 
treated as the means of transmitting per- 
sonality ; the task of the teacher is to enable 
us raw students to enter the society of the 
intellectually great in the confidence that 
such association, and only such association, 
can kindle and sustain the life of the mind. 

80 



DINNER 

This service is one of self-effacement; but 
it is always one of the highest educational 
achievements and is especially necessary in 
an era in which science more and more calls 
the tune in educational thought and prac- 
tice. Impersonal truth is not "truth carried 
alive into the heart by passion" ; impersonal 
truth has little power to "set the hearts of 
youth on flame." The proper study of man- 
kind is still man — and not solely as human- 
ity is sketched out in descriptive formulas, 
but also as it is represented by the great ar- 
tists and humanists of the race. The study 
of literature at Wesleyan is the process of 
becoming acquainted with those exemplars 
of humanity. Our gratitude is beyond ex- 
pression or measure, the more so as we are 
led to recognize the delicacy of the task and 
the poise, skill, and discernment necessary 
for a teacher of humane learning amid the 
confusing educational theories of our time. 



8X 



ADDRESS 

AS COLLEAGUE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF 
ENGLISH 

Professor Mead, '81 

I COUNT it a privilege and an honor to 
have the opportunity of expressing pubhcly 
the obligation I owe to one who, for many 
years, has been my closest colleague and 
friend; and yet I feel some of the embar- 
rassment that the hero of Charles Dudley 
Warner's "Being a Boy" felt at his first eve- 
ning party. Never before had John found 
any difficulty in talking to Cynthia, his red- 
headed sweetheart, but now he stood tongue- 
tied and simply could not think of anything 
good enough to say at the party. But, after 
all, my difficulty is not exactly the same as 
his. I feel rather the impossibihty of pack- 
ing into a few words the thousand things I 
have felt these many years, and have not 
said because there has been no suitable op- 
portunity. But if all were to be taken out 
of my life that directly or indirectly I owe 
to my teacher and colleague, the record 
82 



DINNER 

would be indeed strangely different, and I 
should not be here to-night. 

There have been two or three great turn- 
ing points in my life, and one of them came 
when, at the age of sixteen, I entered Wes- 
ley an University and passed under the spell 
of Professor Wuichester. At that time, he 
was the youngest professor in the faculty, 
and he had a youthf ulness of spirit j oined to 
maturity of thought and feUcity of expres- 
sion that appealed to me at once. He had 
succeeded a brilhant teacher, Fales Newhall, 
professor of rhetoric and Enghsh Uterature 
and instructor in Hebrew, but in a very real 
sense Professor Winchester introduced into 
the Wesleyan curriculum the study of Eng- 
hsh literature as distinct from facts about 
literature. 

In common with most other American col- 
leges, Wesleyan, for the first forty years or 
more of its history, gave httle attention to 
the systematic study of hterature; rhetoric 
and composition and debate were the main- 
stays in the department of English. Any 
young fellow, decently brought up, was sup- 
posed to be ready to read literature if he 
could find the time. But Pj-ofessor Win- 
83 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Chester, with his usual keen insight, realized 
that the average student needs some guid- 
ance if he is to work to advantage, and he 
developed a simple and natural plan of class- 
room work along with outside reading. His 
method was to supplement a brief historical 
outUne of the literature with brilhant com- 
ment on individual authors, and to bring the 
student into sympathetic yet critical rela- 
tions with the literature read in the class- 
room. We were made to feel that literature 
is a human thing requiring close attention to 
the men who made it. And a very effective 
method it was. 

As I look back to those days of long ago, 
I remember the thrill that came over me 
when, under his inspiring touch, I first saw 
a new heaven and a new earth ! I had had a 
leaning toward mineralogy and geology, and 
I had diligently studied rhombic dodeca- 
hedrons and scalenodedrons, and had toyed 
a little with the pterodactyl and the plesio- 
saurus, but I soon decided that such com- 
pany was rather too old for me, and I began 
to look for something more congenial. 

I remember marching off one winter night 
with two or three fellow students to a coun- 
84 



DINNER 

try church three miles away to hear one of 
the earhest of those brilliant lectures which 
have since then charmed so many thousands 
of hearers. That night I stood as it were on 
a mountain top and for the first time looked 
across the great enchanted sea of Uterature 
on which I was to spend the best years of my 
hfe. About that time I began to ask my- 
self whether I might not some day venture 
in humble fashion to point the way to stu- 
dents of Enghsh. And, as things sometimes 
come to those that stand and wait, so it was 
with me. 

I pass over the years of association in the 
Wesleyan library, where Professor Win- 
chester was librarian and where I at length 
became assistant Hbrarian. The only com- 
pensation I had in my student days was the 
privilege of drawing an unlimited number 
of books and of being in close association 
with the librarian, but I felt that the return 
was ample. 

In the decade between 1880 and 1890, 
there came a great change over the study of 
Enghsh in American colleges. When I was 
a student at Wesleyan, very few colleges 
gave courses in English earher than the six- 
85 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

teenth century, except, perhaps, in Chaucer; 
but owing to the activities of such scholars 
as Sievers and Ten Brink and Zupitza in 
Germany, and Furnivall and Morris and 
Skeat and Sweet in England, and March 
and Child and Cook in America, there was 
a growing reahzation of the fact that it was 
absurd to study Latin and Greek roots and 
to be anxious to know the elements of the 
fixed stars and to give no attention to the 
antecedents of the language and literature 
of the time of Shakespeare and Spenser and 
Milton. 

In the year 1889 the Ayres bequest of 
$250,000 wrought something of a revolution 
at Wesleyan and made specialization in vari- 
ous departments possible. This was a re- 
form long overdue. In my student years 
the professors were expected to show a range 
of knowledge that rivaled King Solomon's 
in his best days, and they discoursed on 
everything from the cedars of Lebanon to 
the hyssop that springeth out of the wall. 
Professor Rice once covered the depart- 
ments of geology, mineralogy, physical ge- 
ography, physiology, biology, botany, and 
the relations of science and religion, besides 

86 



DINNER 

serving as secretary of the faculty and now 
and then as college preacher, though in his 
later career he contented himself mainly 
with geology. While I was in college, Pro- 
fessor Winchester covered the entire field of 
English literature and language, to say 
nothing of rhetoric and composition and 
logic and the management of the college 
library. In the old days of book recitations 
this was all very well, but it almost smoth- 
ered the man who tried to do it. 

The year 1890 marks the time of Profes- 
sor Winchester's partial emancipation from 
bondage. When the call came to me to ac- 
cept a chair at Wesleyan after three years' 
study in Europe, there were two considera- 
tions that mainly influenced me to come to 
Wesleyan rather than to go to a larger uni- 
versity in the Middle West ; one was that I 
might work in my own college, and the other, 
that I might continue my association with 
my old friend and teacher. 

For considerably more than a quarter of 
a century we have hved side by side, closer 
than many brothers hve, and as peaceably 
as two kittens in a basket. The relation of 
two closely alhed departments in a college 
87 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

like Wesleyan is not the relation of two ab- 
stractions; it is a very human and personal 
thing. No one could have had a colleague 
more delicately considerate than I have had. 
There inevitably arise numerous occasions in 
a college department, as in the best regu- 
lated families, for wide differences of opin- 
ion when questions of policy are concerned. 
Yet in all these years there has not been one 
serious misunderstanding. 

I could say more and yet more, but I real- 
ize that my time is spent and that better 
things are yet to come, still I may at least 
say in closing that I am proud to be the col- 
league of one who for many years has been 
one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of 
the humanizing forces that have moulded 
Wesleyan University. 



88 



ADDRESS 

as colleague on the faculty for 
a half-century 

Professor Rice^ '65 

The speakers who have preceded me are 
men of high attainment and reputation in 
the study of literature, and are abundantly 
competent to estimate the value of Profes- 
sor Winchester's work as a student, a critic, 
and a teacher of English Hterature. 

I have no such quahiications. I am an un- 
aesthetic scientist, and presumably know less 
about EngUsh literature than Professor 
Winchester knows about geology. He cer- 
tainly once knew something about geology, 
for I passed him up. The only reason for 
my being on the program is a half -century 
of friendship and comradeship. 

Professor Winchester was a member of 
the first class upon which I tried my 'pren- 
tice hand as a teacher. The art of recita- 
tion had not then become a lost art. A good 
student in those days was accustomed to de- 
liver a resume of one or two pages of a text- 
89 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

book, more or less, in good, clear English, 
without waiting to have his knowledge cork- 
screwed out of him by a series of questions. 
There were three men in that class whose 
recitations surpassed almost anything that I 
have ever heard since. In recent years a rec- 
itation such as those men were accustomed 
to make would have taken my breath away. 
Winchester was one of that trio. 

In those old days, at evening chapel, after 
hymn and prayer, a senior was accustomed 
to ascend the platform and deliver an ora- 
tion. To read or to hear the compositions of 
undergraduates is not usually a great inspi- 
ration to an instructor, though occasionally 
there is the joy of seeing in the performance 
of an undergraduate some embryonic proph- 
ecy of ability to do something some time. 
There was one man in that first senior class 
— I need not name him — whose orations had 
a maturity of thought and an exquisite beauty 
of language which an undergraduate very 
seldom attains. Some of the thoughts and 
some fine turns of expression impressed 
themselves upon my memory, and remain to 
this day. 

At his graduation in 1869, Winchester 
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DINNER 

was elected librarian, and continued in 
charge of the library until 1885, though in 
the later years he had an assistant to relieve 
him of most of the routine work. In 1873 
he was elected professor of the department 
which he has made the joy and pride of every 
son of Wesleyan. 

I cannot speak of his lectures on literature 
from the point of view of an expert. But 
it may be worth while to speak of the im- 
pression his lectures have made on men of 
my own class — men of some general intelli- 
gence, whose main intellectual activities have 
been in very diflPerent lines from his. We 
men of science, trained to minute accuracy 
of observation and cautious induction, deal- 
ing largely in careful quantitative work, 
weighing, measuring, counting, and map- 
ping, like to turn to literature sometimes for 
recreation and inspiration. When we hear 
a literary lecture, we want to find recreation 
or inspiration. We are not greatly inter- 
ested in the wissenschaftlich criticism which 
has been ground out so abundantly for doc- 
toral theses in German universities. We 
are not anxious for inventories of strong and 
weak inflections, of dialectic peculiarities, of 
91 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

imperfect rhymes, or of metrical eccentrici- 
ties. What we have enjoyed when we have 
heard Professor Winchester lecture on ht- 
erature is the intense humanity which he has 
revealed. He has made us acquainted with 
the writers of whom we have heard him 
speak, so that we have taken those men into 
the circle of our friends. We have loved to 
hear him because he has enlarged and en- 
nobled our human experience. We like him, 
too, for his interest in normal mental proc- 
esses, in wholesome thoughts and feelings 
and passions. Literature, as he has pre- 
sented it to us, is not a museum of mental 
and moral pathology. His lectures have 
inspired us with a new appreciation of the 
rehgious outlook of human nature. He has 
not preached at us, but no less he has shown 
us that human thought and human life are 
noblest when they are hnked with the divine. 
I have always been impressed in his lectures 
by the harmonious union of delicacy of sen- 
timent and strong common sense. 

For fifty years I have been a colleague of 

Professor Winchester in the faculty of Wes- 

leyan University. I know something of his 

faithfulness in all the details of college work. 

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DINNER 

He has not been the kind of professor who 
knows nothing of the college outside of his 
own lecture room or laboratory. He has 
been a useful and efficient member of the 
faculty in the general work of the college. 
He has served on innumerable committees, 
including some of the most important ones, 
notably the committee on course of study 
and the advisory committee on candidates 
for faculty positions. His usefulness has 
not been exclusively in the college. He has 
been a faithful member of his church and a 
good, citizen in the community. In the 
church he has been the superintendent of the 
Sunday school, a teacher of a Bible class, 
and always an inspiring speaker in the 
prayer meetings. Once he was a delegate 
to the General Conference of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church. 

I think it is fortunate that he has served 
continuously in one position. Years ago he 
had an opportunity to go to a great univer- 
sity on a salary larger than he has ever re- 
ceived here. But I believe he has achieved 
a greater and more enduring usefulness by 
building his life into the college which he has 
loved. 

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PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Well, Winchester, we have been friends 
for a good while. What good times we had 
together in our frisky youth when we 
boarded together! How we startled, the 
staid and reverend members of the faculty, 
most of whom were old enough to be our 
fathers! I shall never forget the pathos 
with which you used to sing the story of 
Hamlet, ending with that direful catastro- 
phe in which 

. . . The Danish court 
All tumbled one on t'other. 

Our extemporaneous frolics at faculty 
parties were not so elaborately artistic as 
the dramatic shows which the Monday Club 
has given in later years; but they did not 
cost much time, and we had a lot of fun. 
We have borne together the burden and heat 
of the day. We have rej oiced in each other's 
joys and sympathized in each other's sor- 
rows. We have rejoiced in the growing en- 
dowment and equipment, reputation and in- 
fluence, of the college we have loved. And 
now the sun hangs low near the western 
horizon. May the twilight be long and 
bright! Let me close in the words of that 
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DINNER 

great poet whom you have taught us "how 
to know," wishing you 

. . . An old age serene and bright, 
And lovely as a Lapland night. 



95 



RESPONSE 

Professor Winchester, '69 

I CONFESS that since I learned two or three 
weeks ago of the honor my friends were pre- 
paring to confer upon me, I have had a kind 
of dread of this evening, partly because it 
must inevitably dispel any illusion which I 
have perhaps too long indulged that I am 
still a young man — it is never altogether 
pleasant to attend the funeral of your own 
youth; and partly also, because I felt that 
the kind things which would be said with ref- 
erence to my long stay and work in Wes- 
leyan, whatever basis of fact they might 
have, would naturally be exaggerated by 
personal friendship and respect for mere 
years. It is not merely ^'De mortuis/' but 
also ^"^De morituris nil nisi bonum dicendum 
^estf But you will let me say now that, as I 
have sat here this evening, all such feelings 
have been quite overcome and forgotten in 
the assurance of your personal regard and 
friendship, for it is this that has touched me 
most deeply. I am, of course, grateful to 
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DINNER 

know that the work I have tried to do in 
Wesleyan through the years has been in 
the judgment of those quahfied to decide, in 
some respects, successful; but I am more 
glad that I may think that, among the thou- 
sands of students I have known in the last 
fifty years, I have so many friends ; for that 
is, after all, about the best reward any 
teacher can have, especially a teacher who 
has spent all his Hfe in the same place. 

I know you will pardon me if an occasion 
like this forces my thoughts backward over 
the years. I have often of late recalled the 
first remark I ever made in Middletown, 
some fifteen minutes after I arrived; it was 
unconsciously prophetic. One or two of 
my hearers will remember that if you en- 
tered Middletown by rail fifty years ago, 
as you ahghted from the train, you found 
yourself facing a well-populated graveyard, 
the Roman Catholic cemetery. Two of us 
boys, that July morning, coming to Middle- 
town for our entrance examination, were a 
bit startled by that greeting; but, as we 
walked up a few steps to Main Street, we 
saw at the first corner another graveyard, 
the old cemetery where the forefathers of 
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PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

the hamlet have been sleeping for two hun- 
dred years; a few steps farther, and we 
passed a third graveyard, appropriately 
named the Mortimer cemetery, flanked 
at the entrance by a marble cutter's shop ; a 
little farther on, turning up the old street 
toward the college, we caught a ghmpse of 
another cemetery, and yet farther, quite on 
the top of the hill, appeared a fifth. I said 
to the chum with me, "George, if I get out 
of this town alive, it will evidently be more 
than most people have done." I am glad to 
say that prediction has been fulfilled. I 
never expect to get out of Middletown ahve, 
and since that July morning fifty-four years 
ago, I have had no other home. I may safely 
say that during the whole period I have 
been attached to Middletown, for, except the 
years spent abroad on college leave, I have 
never been out of the city for more than a 
few weeks at a time in the half century. I 
count it a privilege to have hved so long in 
the most beautiful city of New England, 
and for one-half that time on its most beauti- 
ful street, a city set in a region of which I 
may say, parodying old Dr. Butler: "Doubt- 
less God could have made a more beautiful 
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DINNER 

region, but doubtless God never did," a re- 
gion whose roads and lanes and hills and 
streams seem to me more lovely every year. 
I count myself doubly fortunate to have 
found here congenial work and congenial 
friends in Wesleyan University; work ex- 
panding to the limits of my ability, friends 
in the trustees, faculty, and students of the 
college to whom I could always look for 
hearty support and fellowship. All the work 
of my hfe has been, in some way, rooted in 
Wesleyan University; it is a comfort to 
know as one draws toward the sunset, that 
one's work, however slight its success, was 
blemished by no really fatal errors, dark- 
ened by no personal animosities. 

But this is not the hour or the place for 
purely personal reminiscence. Let me rather 
say something of the old college as I first 
knew it. When I entered Wesleyan in 
1865, the catalogue showed an attendance 
of 121; the senior class numbered 16; there 
was a faculty of a president, five professors, 
and one instructor. ~ When I graduated in 
1869, there were 148 men in the college. In 
those four years there had been one very 
notable addition to the faculty; in 1867, 
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PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

William North Rice was elected professor 
of geology, and with his accession began the 
rapid and remarkable development in sci- 
entific study which marked the history of 
Wesley an for the next half -century. Some 
of us who came to know Professor Rice in 
our senior year, and have known him 
with increasing admiration and friendship 
through the following years, cannot forget 
that it was to him that we owed our intro- 
duction to modern scientific thought and its 
manifold relations to the truths of life. 

But I want to say a word in commenda- 
tion of that little college of the later sixties. 
I am sometimes inclined to resent the tone 
of advanced superiority in which I hear it 
spoken of. If there were but seven men on 
its faculty, they had only about 140 men to | 
teach, and the men on that faculty were all 
real teachers. The course was, at all events, 
compact and symmetrical; it did not bewilder 
the student in a maze of electives ; nor did it 
expect him to decide by the time he was 
through sophomore year what he was to do 
for the rest of his life, and to choose his elec- 
tives in accordance with that decision. It 
is rather the fashion to depreciate classical 
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DINNER 

study just now; but the student of English 
will admit, at all events, that there is hardly 
any better training in accuracy and felicity 
of phrase and in the appreciation of liter- 
ary form, than the attempt to translate in a 
satisfactory way some of the odes of Hor- 
ace. Instruction in philosophy and econom- 
ics in the old college was mostly given, not 
by reading, but by text-books and recitation, 
or rather by text-books and discussion ; per- 
haps there is no better method. When, for 
example, President Cummings, in the class 
in Butler's Analogy, said to one of his 
youngsters, "Will you give Butler's argu- 
ment to prove that the present scheme of 
divine government is not perfect but pro- 
gressive?" and then, pushing his spectacles 
back on his forehead, waited for an answer, 
you found it necessary to have a close train 
of reasoning packed accurately into your 
mind and then to give it out in your own 
words; and there is no better training for 
both thought and expression than that. And, 
when I hear it said sometimes that such a 
narrow and academic education as that shut 
men out from interest in the affairs of the 
great world, and won't do for our day when 
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PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

we are just coming out of a great world war, 
and the air is full of questioning and danger, 
I think that the people who say that forget 
that, when we boys entered college in 1865, 
we too had just come out of a great war in 
which our fathers, brothers, nay some of us, 
had been fighting (five of my own class saw 
service in the Civil War). That was a war 
that came near being a world conflagration. 
We remembered when Mr. Adams said to 
England's prime minister, "Your Excel- 
lency will remember that this means war"; 
when Napoleon the Little had almost got his 
imperial grip upon Mexico ; we remembered 
when the greatest American was assassin- 
ated; our first presidential vote was cast for 
General Grant; and all through our college 
course and for some time thereafter, the 
country was seething with problems more 
difficult and serious even than those of to- 
day. No! The old college that taught men 
to think did not unfit men for hfe. 

But you will not infer from the enthusi- 
asm of an old man for the college that found 
him young — and did very much to keep him 
so — that I suppose the college of the late 
sixties would suit the conditions of to-day. 
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DINNER 

A college or any other institution that does 
not grow and adapt itself to changing con- 
ditions is dying. Wesleyan has been stead- 
ily growing for the last half -century. Every- 
body admits that the most striking phenom- 
enon for the last thirty years is the rapid 
growth of physical science and its manifold 
influences and relations to the needs and 
thoughts of men. Professor Rice could tell 
you how promptly and ably Wesleyan Uni- 
versity responded to this great advance in 
thought. If I emphasize for a few moments 
the growth of interest in another depart- 
ment, it is because I am better acquainted 
with it. But let me here disclaim any such 
important part in the development of Eng- 
lish literature in the college as my friends 
have been kind enough to suggest. It was 
rather my good fortune, when I was gradu- 
ated without any special preparation for 
anything, to be assigned to work for which 
at that time it was the general opinion that 
no special preparation was necessary — I was 
first appointed college librarian. A new 
library building had just been built large 
enough to accommodate 90,000 volumes, and 
we had 13,000 volumes to put in it. To ar- 
103 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

range these volumes on the shelves and des- 
ignate them by proper labels would seem a 
task that might safely be intrusted to an 
intelligent youngster with some liking for 
the outsides of books. That was nominally 
my work for the next four years. I very 
soon found, however, as other librarians were 
finding — Dr. Dewey at Amherst, for exam- 
ple — that with a growing hbrary the system 
of arrangement for which our library was 
built was inadequate; I began to change it 
before I left the library, and my successors 
have been changing it ever since. Our li- 
brary to-day is larger than fifty years ago 
by 100,000 volumes, and no one would be 
for one moment considered competent to do 
the work of arranging or cataloguing it 
who had not been trained in modern library 
science. 

I began my teaching of English with a 
similar lack of preparation. During my 
undergraduate years, little English was 
taught in college, and none was required for 
admission. It is true that, under the head 
of English requirements printed in the cat- 
alogue, stood the portentous statement, "An- 
cient and modern history, ancient and mod- 
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DINNER 

ern geography, English grammar." How 
much ancient and modern geography and 
history the examiners expected to get or 
the candidates proposed to give, I am sure 
I don't know; I have no recollection about 
it, but I do remember my own examination 
in Enghsh grammar. It was conducted by 
the venerable John Johnston, professor of 
all the natural sciences, and it ran thus : "Mr. 
Winchester?" "Yes." " ^Oh, for a lodge in 
some vast wilderness, some boundless con- 
tiguity of shade!' Parse shade f^ How I 
parsed shade I do not know, but when I had 
done it, I had passed the examination. 

A year or two before I entered Wesleyan, 
one of the most brilliant men that ever 
taught here. Tales Newhall, was elected pro- 
fessor of rhetoric and English Hterature and 
instructor in Hebrew. Doctor Newhall 
taught rhetoric during several years, in class 
and out of it; he could not help it; but per- 
haps the work he most enjoyed was that 
as instructor in Hebrew. In my senior 
year I elected Hebrew, partly because the 
only elective offered in college then was a 
cruel choice between Hebrew and differen- 
tial calculus, and I felt I had reached the 
105 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

limit of my own mathematical attainments; 
partly, however, because I wanted to be in 
Doctor Newhall's class. I did not get much 
Hebrew, nor care to, but I shall always re- 
member the intense vividness with which he 
used to read and expound some passages in 
Isaiah and in the Psalms — that was teaching 
Enghsh literature ! As to his formal instruc- 
tion in Enghsh literature, it comprised 
merely one term's study, sophomore year, of 
a rather dry history of Enghsh Hterature; 
and when Professor Newhall left, in 1871, 
even that was dropped. 

The year 1873, as you know, marks the 
beginning of a new period in the history of 
our curriculum; for it was then that a plan 
of elective study was somewhat cautiously 
introduced. It was in this college year 1873- 
1874 that English hterature began to be 
taught in Wesleyan. Here again, if I may 
drop into autobiography, I was in luck. 
When I was appointed librarian at my grad- 
uation, I do not suppose anyone ever ex- 
pected I should teach anything; I had no 
such expectation myself. In the next two 
or three years I was employed several times 
as a stop -gap; before the end of my first 
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DINNER 

year I helped in the rhetorical work of the 
freshman and sophomore years, and was 
once even put in charge of a class in logic. 
When, therefore, it was decided that some 
Enghsh literature ought to go into the list 
of elective studies; as the professor of 
modern languages did not care to take it 
and as there was no one else at hand, with a 
very unjustifiable rashness I was made pro- 
fessor of rhetoric and English hterature. I 
had but one course, assigned to the junior 
year, but I ventured in this course to adopt 
a more modern and scholarly text-book, and 
to combine with the text-book work the 
careful reading in class of several great 
English classics, Chaucer, Spenser, Shake- 
speare, Milton, and Pope. The plan was, 
in following years, modified and enlarged 
in various ways, especially by requiring 
every member of the class to take a short 
course of collateral reading by himself. 
About 1880, being reUeved of work in the 
library, and of teaching in other depart- 
ments, I ventured to add a second more ad- 
vanced course so that the work of the de- 
partment might run into two years. In 
1890, when my friend. Professor Mead, took 
107 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

charge of rhetoric in the lower classes, I was 
enabled to add yet another course, thus giv- 
ing three full-year courses to the study, and 
I soon added a one-hour course of lectures 
on literary criticism. Professor Mead also 
extended the range of English study by of- 
fering early Enghsh and linguistics. This 
has been the program of the department for 
the past twenty years, except that within 
the last ten years, with the increase in size 
of the classes, the introductory courses have 
been given in part by assistants. 

I may add that the large but meaningless 
statement for admission in English, "ancient 
history, geography, grammar," written in 
the catalogue remained there until 1873, 
when I succeeded in having it changed to 
"English grammar and history of the United 
States." In the late seventies, I think first 
in 1878, a number of teachers of English in 
the New England colleges held a conference 
to see if it were not possible to arrange a 
reasonable and uniform admission require- 
ment in English, a requirement which should 
lay the foundation for further study in col- 
lege and at the same time encourage the 
study of English in secondary schools. As 
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DINNER 

a result of the meeting, there appeared in our 
catalogue and in those of several colleges in 
the year 1880-1881 a new requirement call- 
ing for the writing at the hour of the exam- 
ination of a brief essay, the subject to be 
taken from one of several specified English 
masterpieces. The example was followed by 
other colleges, and in 1885 there was formed 
the Commission of New England Colleges 
on Entrance Examinations, which in the 
next fifteen years secured unified require- 
ments not only in English but in several 
other studies, and by subsequent arrange- 
ment has provided for uniformity of en- 
trance examinations in most of the colleges 
of the United States. 

This brief sketch may show that Wesleyan 
was not behind her sister New England col- 
leges in recognizing the importance of Eng- 
lish literature. And to-day no one surely 
will deny the claim of the Hterature of our 
own language to a place in any system of 
higher education. If, as Mr. Arnold ob- 
served, culture consists in knowing "the 
best which has been thought and said," then 
culture is manifestly hardly possible without 
an acquaintance with literature. For, what 
109 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

is literature? Not perhaps all the best that 
has been thought and said, for that might 
include science; but hterature is the best 
thought that has been touched and vitalized 
with emotion and uttered in a manner of 
lasting charm. Thus defined, literature is 
obviously the best interpreter of life — the 
life of the individual man and the hf e of his- 
torical periods. For the temper of a man 
depends not merely nor principally upon 
what he thinks, but upon what he feels; the 
character of an age depends not merely upon 
its permanent intellectual qualities, but upon 
its dominant tone of feeling. It is not too 
much to say that if we wish to know any life 
outside the little circle of our own personal 
acquaintance, we must know it largely 
through books. If you want to understand 
the growth of thought and accompanying 
changes of feeling on matters of scientific, 
rehgious, political, and social importance, 
say, in England from 1840 to 1880, you must 
read Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Car- 
lyle. You will find there the best record of 
the inner life of the period. 

This statement may suggest that our con- 
ception of literature is often too narrow. We 
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DINNER 

are prone to confine the term to such writ- 
ings as appeal primarily to the sense of 
beauty, of which poetry may be the purest 
type. But no really good hterature, I 
think, was ever born of merely aesthetic im- 
pulse. The maxim, *'Art for art's sake," 
marks a narrow and shallow hteratiu-e. 
Keats says, I know, "A thing of beauty is 
a joy forever." That is true, and it is the 
secret of some specimens of Hterature, 
Keats's own poems for example. We re- 
member them, we admire them, but we do 
not live with them. For the great books do 
not merely soothe and satisfy, they arouse 
and inspire; a great literature must be wise 
as well as beautiful. Thus the round of good 
literature which may be studied and taught 
in college stimulates all ideas of our think- 
ing for all our lives long. I have been read- 
ing with two classes this year, in one, the 
writings of Edmund Burke, and in the other 
the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Of 
the brilliance and force of Burke's style and 
the subtlety of Emerson's I think I had some 
appreciation years ago; but every read- 
ing enlarges one's conception of Burke's po- 
htical wisdom, which in some passages seems 
111 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

almost prophetic and might have been writ- 
ten to-day; and every reading of Emer- 
son clarifies our vision of those truths of his 
philosophy which underlie our deepest 
thinking, now and always. There may be 
questions as to how much of our literature 
should be read in college, questions as to the 
order in which it should be studied, questions 
as to the best method of approach — whether 
historical, biographical, or critical; on all 
such questions teachers will differ, and it is 
perhaps only by experience that any teacher 
can map out a scheme of study suited to 
college work; but there is no question that 
every college ought to give opportunity and 
invitation for such lines of study. 

If it is to be said that a true appreciation 
of the best hterature is beyond the abihty of 
young men in college, that may be admit- 
ted readily enough — it is beyond the abihty 
of professors too. I never felt so strongly 
as this year the need of more history and 
political science to appreciate Burke, or 
more philosophy to appreciate Emerson. 
But, on the other hand, most young men by 
the time they are half way through college 
are beginning to discover their natural in- 
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DINNER 

tellectual and emotional aptitudes; that is 
what they come to college for. I think, in- 
deed, that the study of literature should 
always be elective, for the degree of enjoy- 
ment that must precede hterary apprecia- 
tion cannot be required and coromanded; 
but, given such initial inclination, the stu- 
dent will respond to the growing attractive- 
ness of his author and will soon feel that a 
real appreciation of hterature is impossible 
with a careless or desultory reading, but 
that it demands and will repay close study. 
And may I say in a word that I think this 
cultivation of a hking for the best in litera- 
ture was never more needed than at the pres- 
ent moment. I remember that ever since the 
time of Horace, the old man has been a "lau- 
dator temporis a^ti/' and I must not close 
on a note of depreciation of everything less 
than a half -century old; but I must confess 
that of late I can understand the maxim of 
Charles Lamb: "When a new book comes 
out, I always read an old one." For I re- 
member some books that were new in my 
college days: Tennyson's Enoch Arden and 
Idylls of the King, and Browning's Drama- 
tic Personce and The Ring and the Bookj 
113 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Matthew Arnold's poems and most of his 
essays. I remember also some books writ- 
ten on this side of the water. I remember 
on a day's journey, during a summer vaca- 
tion, reading Whittier's Snow-Bound, the 
most perfect idyll of New England hfe ever 
written. As for war poetry, the year I en- 
tered college James Russell Lowell was 
writing the last and best of the Biglow Pa- 
pers and the great Commemoration Ode, 
Emerson had recently published the noble 
quatrain on Sacrifice: 

Though love repine, and reason chafe. 
There came a voice without reply, — 

" 'Tis man's perdition to be safe, 

When for the truth he ought to die." 

Ohver Wendell Holmes was writing the 
Breakfast Table series in the new Atlantic 
Monthly, and Emerson was still giving life 
to the last gleanings of his noble heart. 
When I entered college, two great noveHsts, 
one in America and one in England, had 
just died, Hawthorne and Thackeray. And 
in my freshman year the students were in- 
terested enough to write essays about them. 
In my junior year, if I remember rightly, 
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DINNER 

the third great novelist, Charles Dickens, 
came to see us here in America, and we stu- 
dents crowded up to Hartford to see him 
and hear him read. There are novels enough 
now being pubhshed in Enghsh, but can you 
mention a single one of them that you are 
sure will be known and quoted fifty years 
from now? We read enough to-day — ^too 
much — we have a plague of reading, but I 
am inclined to say that never has there been 
a time when men read so much and thought 
so little. Some of us in our college days 
were not much used to the theater, but we 
managed to hear Fechter and Edwin Booth 
in "Hamlet," and a httle later in England, 
Henry Irving; but nowadays, seven nights 
a week, men and women flock to moving pic- 
ture shows which seem especially adapted 
to deaf-and-dumb amusement of feeble im- 
aginations. Nothing keeps the heart young 
like really great hterature, but most of the 
plays that are written to-day seem intended 
to minister to the unhealthy curiosity of 
callow youth or to amuse the seniUty of 
second childhood. As to poetry, we have a 
whole school who assure us not only that 
they are poets, but declare themselves to be 
115 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

the first and only original poets of America. 
The lady who is the leader and sponsor for 
the school, and who has written what she 
calls poetry on some red slippers in a Bos- 
ton shop window, and on the dining room in 
the Grand Central Station, and other poems 
in verse, free in more senses than one, on 
vulgar hfe in decayed New England towns, 
has also written essays in which she gravely 
declares that her great namesake of the Big- 
low Papers who set the real Yankee in verse 
was probably a cultivated, well-read man, 
but not really a poet — ^least of all, a gentle- 
manly American poet. 

Well, time will show. Meantime I think 
we shall do well to cherish for ourselves and 
to recommend to all our pupils those ideals 
of spirit and form which have been embod- 
ied in lasting literature — hterature that 
keeps the intellect strong, the heart yoimg, 
the imagination fresh, and the feelings pure. 
For myself, I can say as I sit down, and it is 
the sum of all that I have to say, that I am 
thankful to Wesleyan for having given me 
the privilege of spending fifty years of my 
life largely in the reading and studying of 
such literature in the company of younger 
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DINNER 

pupils who shared and doubled my own en- 
thusiasm. 

It is getting toward the sunset ; only seven 
members of my own class are yet living; no 
man who was on the faculty of Wesleyan 
when I first joined it is now in active service. 
I miss many friends and many joys that live 
now only in memory. As we grow old, we 
must needs "count our rosary by the beads 
we miss." It has been my privilege for all 
these years to think almost daily, and in some 
measure to help others to think also, upon 
those things that are pure, and just, and 
honest, and lovely, and of good report, as 
they are enshrined in literature; and it is 
just because that has been my privilege that 
I have escaped and still hope to escape some- 
thing of the chill of life's late afternoon, and 

Obey at eve the voice obeyed at prime. 



117 



WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 

DAILY CHAPEL SERVICE 
THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 1920 

(The morning following Professor Win- 
chester's death) 



PRAYER 

By Professor Crawford 

Our heavenly Father, thou knowest the 
burdened hearts with which we come into 
thy presence this morning. Yesterday the 
gifted teacher, the beloved friend was with 
us. To-day he is gone. He who for over 
half a century has spoken to the men on this 
campus words of high inspiration, of poetic 
beauty, of kindly sympathy, will speak such 
words no more forever. O God, our Father, 
our broken words cannot tell our loss to thee 
nor even to ourselves. 

But while our hearts are full of grief, they 
are also full of gratitude. We thank thee, 
O God, for thy gift to the world in the Hf e 
and service of Caleb Winchester. We thank 
thee for what that life has meant to us and 
to all the multitudes whom it has touched 
for good. We thank thee for the keen intel- 
lect and the rare gift of utterance which en- 
abled him to interpret to successive genera- 
tions of college students the highest truths 
of hterature, history, and philosophy; for 
121 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

the friendly sympathy which bound us to 
him by ties which nothing could sever save 
cruel death itself; for his simple and un- 
faltering faith in thee ; and for the steady will 
which transmuted that faith into righteous 
living. And we thank thee for our faith that 
that noble soul which has left us has not 
simply been blotted out, but has only been 
called to the fellowship of the church tri- 
umphant which is without fault before the 
throne of God. 

We humbly invoke thy blessing on the 
stricken family from whom thou hast re- 
moved husband and father and brother. 
We pray for the college which he loved, and 
to which he gave the last full measure of de- 
votion. We beseech thee that here, and 
wherever youth are gathered for study, thou 
wilt raise up men of talent who shall dedi- 
cate their talent to the high ideals which our 
brother cherished, and who shall be sustained 
in life and in death by the same faith which 
sustained him. We ask in the name of his 
Master and ours. Amen. 



122 



REMARKS 

By Vice-President Dutcher 

One thought fills our minds this morning. 
We are bowed in a common sorrow because 
our Professor Winchester passed from 
among us last evening. Whether we had 
known him for a half -century, as had Pro- 
fessor Crawford, or for a score of years, as 
was my own privilege, or for the four years 
of the college generation, as had you seniors, 
or for a few short weeks, as had you men of 
the freshman class — ^we all loved him, we all 
feel a deep sense of personal loss. 

This is not the time to rehearse our appre- 
ciation of his rich scholarship, of his exquis- 
ite literary taste, of his virile philosophy of 
life, of his sincere Christian faith exempli- 
fied in a life of rare consistency, of his quiet 
but deep moral earnestness, of his charm and 
inspiration as a teacher. We think of him 
at this hour as a regular attendant upon 
these chapel services, of the religious value 
of which he often spoke with deep feehng, 
and as a leader in these morning devotions 
123 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

whose prayers were beautiful benedictions. 
We think of him as the friend whose gra- 
cious manner and kindly speech always 
warmed our hearts, as the wise counselor to 
whom we always turned with a confidence 
that was never disappointed. You younger 
men of the student body, like the members of 
fifty earUer Wesleyan classes, will ever re- 
member him as the best beloved of teachers. 
We older men of the faculty have, through 
the years of our service at Wesleyan, looked 
to him as an exemplar, and have ventured to 
hope that in some degree our own efforts 
might partake of the fine qualities we marked 
in the wisdom and excellence of his teaching. 
To us all his hfe will remain an inspiration 
and a challenge. 

Our own grief is deep and overcoming, 
but we do not forget those who knew him 
in the sweeter and closer relations of the 
home, to whom our sympathy goes out, and 
for whom we offer our earnest prayers to 
the heavenly Father for the consolation he 
alone can bring to them in their irreparable 
loss. 



124 



FUNERAL 

OF 

PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

SATUEDAY, MAECH 27, 1920 



REMARKS 

By Rev. William De Verne Beach, D.D. 

Pastor, First Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Middletown, Connecticut, 1913-1920 

Fifty-five years ago Caleb Thomas Win- 
chester united with the First Methodist 
Episcopal Church of this city, coming from 
Wilbraham, Massachusetts, where he had 
been a student, and for all these years he has 
been continuously a member, not merely in 
the sense that his name has been upon the 
roll, but in that he has steadily carried the 
church in his thought and affection, and has 
conscientiously given of his time and 
strength and money for its life. He has 
occupied most of the official positions with- 
in the gift of the church, such as Sunday 
school teacher, Sunday school superintend- 
ent, steward, trustee, and chairman of the 
music committee, and he has magnified them 
all by the grace of his personality and the 
efficiency of his service. Altogether he has 
built himself into the church in a unique way, 
which makes it difficult to overestimate his 
127 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

worth, even as it will be impossible for any 
one to fill his place. In his going from us 
we feel a sense of irreparable loss. It is 

As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, 
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, 
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky. 

It was my high privilege to be Professor 
Winchester's pastor for seven years. The 
friendship thus granted me revealed quali- 
ties in him concerning which I wish I were 
more competent to speak — simplicity of 
heart and singleness of purpose, sturdy 
fidelity to duty at all times and under all 
conditions, grace and charm which marked 
his whole life even as they did each separate 
task. Many other characteristics may seem 
to others of his friends to be equally promi- 
nent ; these were the three which impressed 
me most. 

His interests were wide in range and rich 
in variety — literature first and foremost, of 
course ; but music, also, of which he was pas- 
sionately fond, and in which he was person- 
ally more gifted than his modesty would ad- 
mit; education, a concern which prompted 
him for many years to lend his aid to Wil- 
128 



FUNERAL 

braham Academy, the president of whose 
board of trustees he was at his death; and 
civic matters; and sports — ^my purpose is 
not to exhaust the list, but to suggest that in 
the simpUcity of Professor Winchester's 
faith and the singleness of his purpose, they 
were not many things but one. I did not 
name religion as one of his interests, because 
it was not one among many, but one in and 
through them all. It was not something 
apart from the rest of Ufe, it was a part of 
all his life. In both his thinking and his 
living the line between secular and sacred 
had vanished. It was one of his frequent 
remarks that he thought he was serving God 
as truly while he lectured at college as when 
he led in prayer at church. He had achieved 
what Saint Paul said about his own hfe: it 
was all "one thing," the whole inner hfe 
united in loyalty to Jesus Christ, the whole 
varied round of outer activities made one 
by their consecration to that same Master 
and Lord. 

Equally marked was his fidehty to duty, 
whether in matters large or small, vitally 
important or seemingly insignificant. Pro- 
fessor Winchester may have had moods, as 
129 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

most of us have; if so they were never al- 
lowed to interfere with the doing of his work 
and the fulfilling of his obhgations. He 
valued the emotions highly. Spending so 
much of his life in dealing with literature, 
the touchstone of which is its power of ap- 
peal to the emotions, he had a nature wide 
open for the play of feeling. His essays in 
literary criticism and his interpretations of 
the great poets will hve because they give 
expression not only to clear intellectual 
judgments, but also to rich emotional ap- 
peal. In his spiritual life also there was 
very much of *'the joy of his Lord." But 
whether with or without emotion you could 
always count upon Professor Winchester 
to do his duty. Perhaps because he had 
seen so often the merely emotional nature, 
unsupported by conscience and will, he often 
seemed to deprecate enthusiasm. To 

. . . run my course with even joy, 
And closely walk with thee to heaven, 

was frequently the desire he expressed in 
Charles Wesley's famihar Hues. 

It sometimes happened that his judgment 
disapproved a decision made in some com- 
130 



FUNERAL 

mittee or board to which he belonged. The 
decision once made, however, the loyalty and 
generosity of no one could exceed his own. 

There were times in these later years when 
physical condition and personal inclination 
might have pleaded excuse from this or that 
obligation; his motto, borrowed from that 
of his close friend, Professor Westgate, was 
ever, "Let us attend to the duty of the hour." 

Preeminent among his quahties was the 
charm of his Christian character, the gra- 
ciousness of his personality. The hnes of 
Wordsworth which he so often quoted, 

That best portion of a good man's life, 
His little, nameless, unremembered acts 
Of kindness and of love, 

found fine illustration in himself. He added 
to genuine friendliness the touch of grace. 
He not only held the Christian doctrine, he 
adorned it. He not only displayed the 
strength of Christian holiness, he revealed 
the beauty of it. 

I know of no argument for imimortahty 

outside the Scriptures equal to that of a hfe 

like this which has just gone from our sight. 

A little child playing in the sand may build 

131 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

his house and tear it down at will. We do 
not mind, for it is only a child at play. For 
the Powers-that-be to rear such a structure 
as this human hfe has been, with such tran- 
scendent gifts, for a comparative moment 
of time, only to cast it one side as rubbish, 
is to convict the universe of folly as incred- 
ibly stupid as it would be wantonly cruel. 
It cannot be! 

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the inef- 
fable Name? 
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made 
with hands ! 
What, have fear of change from thee who art 
ever the same? 
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that 
thy power expands? 
There shall never be one lost good! What was, 
shall live as before; 
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying 
sound ; 
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so 
much good more ; 
On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven, a 
perfect round. 



132 



REMARKS 

By President Shanklin 

Tennyson^ beginning the immortal verses 
that were "In Memoriam" to his best friend, 
made invocation to the divine Jesus : 

Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 

Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace. 

Believing where we cannot prove ; 

We have but faith : we cannot know ; 

For knowledge is of things we see ; 

And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness : let it grow. 

So we, in this service, which is a rainbow, 
whose backgromid has been many tears well- 
ing from loving hearts, turn in faith to God, 
believing where we cannot prove. 

Why is it that every one who knew Pro- 
fessor Winchester feels poorer to-day in that 
which makes the true worth of living — 
friendship? That his loving and lovable 
nature drew those who knew him best so 
close to him that it seems that in his death 
something was riven from the inmost being 
133 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

of each of us? The all-containing and all- 
including quality which drew other Hves to 
his was cultured Christian character, that 
reserve force which acts directly by presence 
and without means. Character was the foun- 
dation wall on which the graceful superstruc- 
ture of his hfe was builded; and, although 
the visible presence has suddenly faded from 
view, the character abides, a thing of beauty 
and a joy forever. 

Emerson says: "This [character] is a nat- 
ural power, Hke hght and heat, and all na- 
ture cooperates with it. The reason why we 
feel one man's presence, and do not feel an- 
other's, is as simple as gravity. Truth is the 
summit of being; justice is the application 
of it to affairs. All individual natures stand 
in a scale, according to the purity of this ele- 
ment in them. The will of the pure nms 
down from them into other natures, as water 
runs down from a higher into a lower vessel. 
This natural force is no more to be with- 
stood than any other natural force." Hav- 
ing discovered this law, we are able to un- 
derstand our friend's influence. From his 
childhood he stood foursquare to every wind 
that blows, adopting as his the maxim that 
134 



FUNERAL 

questions of right or wrong have neither 
time nor place nor expediency. This moral 
capital was in part his inheritance from his 
forefathers; yet he consecrated this native 
goodness in the years of his youth by his 
personal surrender to our Lord Jesus Christ, 
adding to the instincts of his boyhood the 
quick and glad response to "whatsoever 
things are true, whatsoever things are hon- 
est, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
things are pure, whatsoever things are 
lovely, whatsoever things are of good re- 
port." 

It was this power of personality that has 
made Wesleyan's chair of Enghsh Uterature 
famous for half a century. This is clearly 
recognized in an editorial in the issue of the 
New York Evening Post of yesterday, 
which says: "The death of Professor Caleb 
T. Winchester, professor of English Hter- 
ature at Wesleyan, removes a figure of the 
ideal type for a college chair. A scholar to 
his finger tips, he infused life into learning." 
This power of personahty may be difficult 
to define; but we all recognize it, and when 
we come into the presence of it we instinc- 
tively pay it homage. It was Professor 
135 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Winchester's teaching, permeated with Win- 
chester, that made him a prince among schol- 
ars. This personal instinct was regnant in 
everything he said and did. He brought in 
himself a character that transmitted truth to 
his students and older friends, and collect- 
ing the light that lies above the stars, laid 
it in clear soft rays upon their daily work 
and life. Twelve college generations of 
Wesleyan men and women gathered into his 
open heart found in him "an image of high 
principle and feeling," the exemplar of the 
fine and firm things for which Wesleyan 
stands. They saw in him a man of great 
capacity and of unconmion intensity of 
mind, who awakened in them higher and bet- 
ter aspirations. They felt that he was a 
man to whom the inner life was a reality, to 
whom the absolute good was his good, and 
truth itself the gate of another world. I 
believe that it will be thought by them one 
of the greatest blessings of their lives that 
in youth they came to know one whose force 
of mind was so inseparably linked with a 
noble character. A distinguished aliminus 
of Wesleyan, now rendering notable service 
in a distant land, in answering a letter where- 
136 



FUNERAL 

in I wrote of Professor Winchester's criti- 
cal illness, replied: "As I recall all that he 
means to me, my heart glows with pride. I 
shall never think of my days at Wesleyan 
without thinking of him. To me he is that 
ideal gentleman of letters that New Eng- 
land has given to the world, a gentleman of 
letters that need ask no favors of any one, 
anywhere in the wide world. His teaching 
was fine, the more so because his own fine 
personality was in his voice and manner as 
well as in his interpretations. I am sure 
every student who came into contact with 
him loved, more than he could otherwise have 
loved, the good and the great in literature 
and in Hfe." 

His living and learning and working were 
like the shining of a star. It is no task for 
stars to shine, and so with him all that he did 
seemed easy, as if it were but the natural 
and spontaneous utterance of what he was, 
the effortless radiance of a nature that was 
made to gather and to utter light. The per- 
sonal charm of Professor Winchester in 
public and in private was something which 
everybody felt who came into the slightest 
association with him. It was the charm of 
137 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

simple truthfulness, of a perfect manliness, 
and a true sympathy with all forms of 
healthy human action, which had its real be- 
ing in his personality itself. He had the 
genius to be loved, the genius to be trusted, 
the genius to be listened to — "the blessed 
triad that must keep company in any Hfe to 
make it winsome, beautiful, commanding, 
and ChristUke." These all found their basal 
elements in his personality, and they so in- 
terpenetrated each other, so played into each 
other and were so harmoniously blended, 
that he everywhere won both love and admi- 
ration. 

The loss which his death has brought to 
the great circle of Wesleyan men and women 
and to Wesleyan itself, it is not possible to 
describe. It is a change in all our lives. 
When some men die it is as if you had lost 
your pocket-knife and were subject to con- 
stant inconvenience until you could get an- 
other. Other men's going is like the vanish- 
ing of a great mountain from the landscape, 
and the outlook on life is changed forever. 

Professor Winchester's life was hke a 
great picture full of glowing color. The 
canvas on which it was painted was inmiense, 
138 



FUNERAL 

It lighted all the room in which it was hung. 
It warmed the chilliest air. It made and it 
will long make life broader, work easier, and 
simple strength and courage dearer to every 
Wesleyan man and woman, and to many 
others in Middletown and throughout the 
world. 

The heavens will still be bright with stars 
and Wesleyan men to come will never miss 
the radiance which they never saw, but for 
those of us who once watched for his hght 
there will always be a spot of special dark- 
ness in the heavens where a star of peculiar 
beauty went out when he died. 

We shall think of him as in the presence 
of God, who is the fountain of light and in 
whom the parts of knowledge which we see 
through a glass darkly are beheld face to 
face. But there is no tongue of man or of 
angel in which such things can be expressed. 
We meditate upon the infinite possibihties of 
that fuller life and are silent. 



139 



MEETING 

OF THE 

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY CLUB 
OF NEW YORK 

May 8, 1920 



ADDRESS 

By Cornelius Roach Berrien, '96 

As a labor of love it should not be diffi- 
cult to pay to Professor Winchester's mem- 
ory a tribute of grateful affection, but when 
we recall all that Professor Winchester was 
to us, when we remember the exquisite ap- 
propriateness with which he was wont to 
express himself, it is anything but easy to 
say what we think of him who was such a 
master of expression and who was so much 
more than that. Yet, the impressions of him 
which come so readily to my mind are in the 
minds of all of us, and we may well seek to 
give to them such expression as we can. 

Everyone who has studied at Wesleyan in 
the last fifty years is the beneficiary of Pro- 
fessor Winchester's hfe and work. Those 
who had the good fortune or the good sense 
to come most directly in contact with him in 
the classroom or elsewhere are to be envied, 
but every Wesleyan alumnus of the period 
to which I refer deserves to be congratulated 
on the privilege which was his of even know- 
ing such a man. 

14^3 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

What vision is it that the memory of Pro- 
fessor Winchester evokes? We see the liv- 
ing picture of a great scholar, the ripe rich- 
ness of whose learning was blended with a 
serene simplicity that gave to the dullest of 
us at least a hint of the charm which can 
attach to scholarship. He was perhaps ex- 
traordinarily fortunate in the selection of 
the field in which he worked, for he appeared 
to have in his work the joy which is the re- 
ward of the creative artist. Although Pro- 
fessor Winchester had to accomplish a world 
of routine drudgery, he never seemed to show 
weariness. It is not hard to imagine how 
much he would have preferred the prepara- 
tion of more of those delightful lectures of 
his to the duty of deciphering the illegible 
and, I fear, usually stupid manuscripts and 
examination papers submitted to him by his 
classes. Only the interest of love and a 
splendid ideal held steadily in view could 
have made it possible for him to bring to his 
pupils and to his public audiences the fresh- 
ness and zest with which he infused all his 
surveys of great books, great authors, great 
literature. 

The humane breadth and catholicity of 
144 



NEW YORK ALUMNI MEETING 

his taste, which ranged with approval from 
Chaucer and Shakespeare to Burke and 
Burns, from Addison and Swift to Brown- 
ing and Arnold, gave to Professor Win- 
chester's learning that graciousness, so far 
removed from weakness, of which even our 
crude youthful intelligence was aware. We 
were young barbarians at play, resisting 
the intrusion of new ideas, but even we came 
under the spell of Professor Winchester's 
gentle, quiet, scholarly force, and in later 
years we perceived better the significance of 
a culture which did not hold itself aloof from 
mankind, which ennobled the conceptions of 
hfe for us all. There has been at Wesleyan 
scholarship as profound as that of Profes- 
sor Winchester, scholarship perhaps as 
broad, but none more gracious or more win- 
ning; none that lent to study more allure; 
none more liberal; none that gave to life 
more meaning. 

In memory also we see Professor Win- 
chester as a great teacher, but I would speak 
of his teaching as characterized not so much 
by understanding as by comprehension, a 
word of more obvious breadth. Only a great 
teacher could have been so tolerant of the 
U5 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

ignorance which he encountered. He taught 
by the way of persuasion and not by the way 
of argument; by definition rather than by 
declaration; by example far more than by 
precept. He ignored the base and selected 
the good. With an extraordinary innate 
sense of what is best in man, his critical taste 
developed steadily, but I beheve that he 
was as trustworthy a guide in the teaching 
of his earlier days as he was in his later Hfe. 
His taste became more informed and his 
comprehension grew, but what a graduate of 
the 'nineties can say of him could also be said 
by the graduate of the 'seventies or of the 
present century — that always he inspired a 
love for great hterature. 

His methods were remote from the meth- 
ods of the laboratory, to which indeed they 
formed an admirable balance, albeit they 
w^re the methods of constructive critical 
analysis. Who is there who sat under him 
in whose remembrance there do not sur- 
vive some fragments of the fine passages of 
prose and poetry which he induced us to 
memorize because they were criteria of the 
best in EngUsh hterature? His methods 
both imparted information for the erection 
146 



NEW YORK ALUMNI MEETING 

of standards of appreciation and trained the 
mind in processes of thought and judgment. 
It was Professor Winchester, I fancy, 
from whom most of us first learned that to 
read was to think. We came to college more 
or less instructed in habits of study when 
text-books were put before us and when we 
were led to lectures of which we were sup- 
posed to take notes. Heading, however, is 
probably for the average youthful mind 
mere reading, an exercise somewhat resem- 
bling the vacant contemplation of the pic- 
tures thrown on the screen in that triumph 
of civilized progress, that perverter of taste 
and enfeebler of intellect, called *'the mov- 
ies." Under Professor Winchester we dis- 
covered what it was to read with apprecia- 
tion because he taught us to get at the con- 
tent of language. We learned from him 
what a vehicle our language is for the ex- 
pression of thought and for the communica- 
tion of feehng. Imperfectly and according 
to our inferior abihties, we learned from him 
none the less that there was no thought which 
could not be imparted and no emotion which 
could not be conveyed in fit words fitly 
chosen. 

147 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

By the felicitous quality of his own ut- 
terances he seemed to make thought easy 
while teaching, often to our despair, that 
there could be no close thinking without the 
right use of the right words in which to ex- 
press thought. Like every great scholar and 
great teacher he sought the truth, and he 
taught that truth cannot be told except by 
an imderstanding speaker who is addressing 
an understanding hearer. He did none of 
the easy writing which makes hard reading. 
He never had to talk down to his audiences, 
whether in the college classroom or the 
public lecture hall, because he always ac- 
quired conscientious mastery of the thought 
which he wanted to convey, and because he 
took an artist's care to select the words in 
which to utter his thought. By his shrewd 
contrasts of the shades of meaning in spoken 
and written language he taught how possible 
it was to think closely ; how impossible it was, 
without regard to verbal shades of meaning, 
really to think at all. In teaching, by dem- 
onstration, how well adapted the English 
language is for the expression of thought, 
he taught us also the nobility of our Eng- 
lish speech as a medium for the study and 
148 



NEW YORK ALUMNI MEETING 

exchange of that truth lying on the border- 
land of thought which we call emotion. 

How much of the charm of his scholarship 
and the graciousness of his teaching was ow- 
ing to his ideal of truth as beauty and beauty 
as truth we cannot say. We know that in 
his company we frequently caught a gleam 
of the "fugitive and gracious light," of that 
spirit "whose dwelling is the light of setting 
suns." In the end, it was always spiritual 
truth which he discerned and which he tried 
to help us descry, which, indeed, he helped us 
faintly to behold. That gleam, once caught, 
who of us has altogether lost? 

Appealing to memory again, what is our 
recollection of Professor Winchester as an 
alumnus of Wesleyan? Let the answer 
come from his wonderful record of a half- 
century of devotion which attests his loyalty 
to the college. Such a representation of loy- 
alty a few others have been. Need I speak 
of Professor Van Vleck and Professor Rice ? 
Professor Winchester was their contempo- 
rary and their peer, the exemplar of a dedi- 
cation to useful service wholly devoid of self- 
seeking, which is Wesleyan's proudest 
achievement. As scholar, as teacher, as 
U9 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

alumnus, as man, we see in Professor Win- 
chester the ideal product of our college. In 
his own person he was a standard of man- 
hood to which we all may repair in our mo- 
ments of weakness and discouragement, of 
humihation and frustration. How many- 
sided he was ! 

He was an exponent of the charm of the 
academic life, yet his manner ranked him an 
equal in any company of those who had 
gained distinction in the world of affairs. 
He was gracious, without condescension, in i 
the classroom or outside of it. He was dis- 
tinguished by a humorous urbanity which 
encompassed the seriousness of life. He 
had a sweet reasonableness that could only 
have welled up from deep springs of the 
spirit. Among his students and with all his 
associates he bore an air of gentle dignity 
without stiffness or restraint. He affected 
no interest which he did not feel, and there 
was no patronizing tinge in the sympathies 
which he manifested. The breadth of his 
comprehension left large room for difference 
of opinion and in hues of action, but in the 
scope of his charity there was no room for 
compromise with principle or for concession 
150 



NEW YORK ALUMISTI MEETING 

of right. We have often talked among our- 
selves of the values which inhere in a hberal 
education, and Caleb Thomas Winchester 
as scholar, teacher, alumnus, and man was 
a memorable illustration of the meaning of 
a course in the humanities. He was a scholar 
and a gentleman. 

Professor Winchester summed up so well 
in himself and in his career that which is the 
ideal of Wesleyan; he was so supreme an 
embodiment of the best that Wesleyan can 
produce; the lovable nobihty, dignity, loy- 
alty, charity, and integrity of his chpracter, 
and the sweetness and light of his scholar- 
ship have been so wrought into the most 
precious traditions of Wesleyan that, if the 
time comes when it is decided to change the 
name of our college, we would do well to 
reach an agreement on the name of "Win- 
chester," and in the memory of her own son 
commemorate and exalt forever the ideals 
for which the college stands. 



151 



Wesleyan Univeesity 
SERVICE IN MEMORY 

OF 

PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 
Sunday, May 16, 1920 



PROGRAM 

Hymn : "O God, our help in ages past." Watts 
Prayer: Professoe Rice 

Psalter : Psalm 90. 
Scripture: Isa. 40, 1-12, 29-31. 
Solo: Mrs. Paul Burt 

"Come let us join our friends above." Wesley 
Introductory Remarks : President Shanklin 
Hymn: 

"The Lord our God alone is strong." Winchester 
Memorial Address: Stockton Axson, L.H.D. 
Professor of English, Rice Institute, 
Houston, Texas 
Hymn: 

"For all the saints, who from their labors rest." 

' How 
Benediction: President Shanklin 



155 



( 



PRAYER 

By Professor Rice 

"Almighty God, with whom do live the 
spirits of those who depart hence in the 
Lord, and with whom the souls of the faith- 
ful, after they are dehvered from the burden 
of the flesh, are in joy and fehcity; we give 
thee hearty thanks for the good examples of 
all those thy servants, who, having finished 
their course in faith, do now rest from their 
labors. And we beseech thee, that we, with 
all those who are departed in the true faith 
of thy holy name, may have our perfect con- 
summation and bliss, both in body and soul, 
in thy eternal and everlasting glory." 

We praise thee for the life of him who for 
the past half -century has borne so large a 
part in the work of this college. We praise 
thee for the great gifts with which thou didst 
endow him; for his loving appreciation of 
the beautiful in life and in hterature, for his 
sanity of thought and sound critical judg- 
ment, for the breadth and accuracy of his 
knowledge, and for his gift of eloquent ex- 
157 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

pression through the spoken and the written 
word. We praise thee for the consecration 
of all his powers to the service of truth and 
righteousness. We praise thee that in the 
dawn of manhood he gave himself up to that 
service which is perfect freedom. We praise 
thee for his fidelity to all professional duty 
and to all the obligations of love and friend- 
ship; for his loyalty to this college, his 
mother and ours. We praise thee for the 
influence which his words of sweetness and 
light have had on successive classes of stu- 
dents and upon readers of his writings. We 
praise thee for the memory of a life of high 
purpose, of patient work, and of noble 
achievement. We praise thee for the faith 
which was his and which is ours, that beyond 
the mystery of death lies the glory of a bet- 
ter life. We praise thee for the risen Lord, 
and for the Father's house with its many 
mansions. 

We pray that those who were nearest and 
dearest to him, and who are most sorely be- 
reaved, may find comfort in the faith which 
he cherished. We pray that all our lives may 
be made nobler by his words and by his ex- 
ample. We pray that the college which he 
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MEMORIAL SERVICE 

loved may never lack great teachers of truth 
and righteousness. We pray that the whole 
church militant on earth may gain continual 
inspiration from the great memory of the 
ever growing host of saints now triumphant 
in heaven. 

"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed 
be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy 
will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give 
us this day our daily bread. And forgive us 
our trespasses, as we forgive those who tres- 
pass against us. And lead us not into temp- 
tation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is 
the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, 
forever. Amen." 



159 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

By Professor Axson 

We are met to commemorate a life, a 
beautiful life, extensive in influence, imusu- 
ally complete in accomplishment. 

The relatives of Professor Winchester, 
and we who were privileged to beliis friends, 
and we who are his disciples in the teaching 
profession. 

We that have loved him so, followed him, hon- 
ored him, 
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 
Learned his great language, caught his clear 
accents,^ 

we, in our hearts, must mourn his death. It 
would prove us insensible to the endearing 
human quality of him if we were not sad- 
dened by the reflection that we shall hear his 
voice no more, nor ever again behold him in 
his simple human kindness and grave and 
gracious dignity. 

But I must think that we shall honor him 
most fittingly by tempering sorrow with 
gratitude ; by thinking more of what we have 
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MEMORIAL SERVICE 

had in his life than of what we have lost 
through his death; by gratitude, for our own 
sakes and the world's sake, that he was per- 
mitted to live so long, and by gratitude, for 
his sake, that he was permitted to go before 
he had long outhved his usefulness, after 
only a comparatively short interval of ill- 
ness. He himself wrote that Wordsworth's 
closing years were "years of the high seren- 
ity that should fitly close such a life as his. 
There was no long period of wasting 
strength and declining mental power." As 
he penned the words we may imagine a little 
prayer in his heart that his own end might 
be like that. 

I think he dreaded superannuation. In 
a letter to me a few years ago, he expressed, 
in the words of Doctor Johnson, the wish 
not to "lag superfluous on the stage." Dur- 
ing the last academic year Professor Win- 
chester was in full possession of his powers, 
in full expression of his usefulness, busily 
teaching his classes in Wesleyan, renewing 
his old enthusiasm for Burke and Emerson, 
saying at the dinner given in his honor last 
June: "I never felt so strongly as this year 
the need of more history and political science 
161 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

to appreciate Burke, or more philosophy to 
appreciate Emerson." 

How un jaded, how splendid that is ! For 
this teacher there was no twilight, no listless 
"going through the motions" of an old rou- 
tine, no fading of old ardors, no dwindling 
echoes of old enthusiasms. He was spared 
the tribute which men's memories pay to the 
vigor of the past in contrast with the lapsed 
energies of the present. At seventy-two he 
was teaching as I know from experience he 
taught at forty-two — vividly alive to the 
many avenues, prospects, and perspectives 
which radiate from every great hterary topic, 
aware, not in dejection, but in stimulated 
effort, of *'the petty done, the undone vast," 
spurred on to learn more because there is so 
much to learn, to teach more because there 
is so much worth teaching. 

His own life and his life's work illustrated 
a remark which he made at that same com- 
memoration dinner last June, "Nothing 
keeps the heart young like really great hter- 
ature." Until his fatal illness he retained 
that youthfulness which is unrelated to 
years, whose continually renewing sources 
are in noble enthusiasms, unfatigued intel- 
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MEMORIAL SERVICE 

lectual interests, and consciousness of con- 
tinuing, unabated usefulness. 

Robert Louis Stevenson, speaking of life 
filled with work and purpose and unwearied 
enthusiasm, all sustained up to the hour of 
departure from life's workshop, said: 

When the Greeks made their fine saying that 
those whom the gods love die young, I cannot help 
believing they had this sort of death also in their 
eye. For surely, at whatever age it overtake the 
man, this is to die young. Death has not been 
suffered to take so much as an illusion from his 
heart. . . . The noise of the mallet and chisel is 
scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done 
blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, 
this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into 
the spiritual land. 

That famous utterance applies to Professor 
Winchester, who at seventy-three died 
young. Thankful are we who loved him for 
that. 

Thankful also that, before his departure, 
he was compelled to sit quietly, all one eve- 
ning, among his admirers, and listen, while 
some of them, speaking for all, told him why 
he was respected and loved : his old comrade 
of the faculty, Professor Rice ; his associate 
163 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

for nearly thirty years in the English de- 
partment of Wesleyan, Professor Mead ; his 
fellow-craftsman from the Enghsh depart- 
ment of a great sister university. Professor 
Cross ; his old student. Professor Gibbs, who 
testifies to the value of what he learned from 
Professor Winchester by practising it in the 
English departments of other colleges. Pro- 
foundly thankful are we that Professor 
Winchester was spared to serve Wesleyan J 
for fifty years, thankful for all reasons, in- 
cluding this, which he himself might per- 
haps have called a minor reason, that the 
fiftieth anniversary created a natural oppor- 
tunity for men, without offense, to stand up 
and tell this most modest of men what they 
thought of him and why they thought it, 
what they felt for him and why they felt it. 
To-day, when we are met, no longer in 
his presence, to commune with each other in 
his memory, seems a fitting occasion to at- 
tempt, however imperfectly, some estimate 
of the significance of his hfe's work, some 
valuation of his achievements as teacher, 
public lecturer, critic, and man of letters. 
My estimate must necessarily be personal, 
though I hope none the less just, for I was 
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MEMORIAL SERVICE 

one of scores of younger teachers whom he 
directed, one of thousands of Wesleyan stu- 
dents whom he inspired. He has meant 
much to me personally, still means much, 
will always mean much until the time arrives 
for me to follow him. My recollections of 
him inevitably involve another, for from the 
outset there was a triple rather than a double 
association, himself, myself, and President 
Wilson. 

It was from President Wilson that I first 
heard Professor Winchester's name. I was 
an undergraduate in the University of 
Georgia; Dr. Wilson was in the first year 
of his membership in the Wesleyan faculty, 
with a high regard for the teaching profes- 
sion, in general, and for the Wesleyan fac- 
ulty, in particular ; in the subsequent chang- 
ing years he frequently remarked that there 
was less "dead wood" in the Wesleyan fac- 
ulty than in any other faculty he had known. 
He wrote me a letter saying that he had an 
inkling that I could be made into a service- 
able teacher of English, and suggested that 
I come to Wesleyan and study under "the 
foremost teacher of EngHsh hterature in 
America." 

165 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

After a year's residence and graduation 
from Wesleyan I went to Johns Hopkins 
University — it was 1890, the year Dr. Wil- 
son transferred his services to the Princeton 
faculty. He sent me to President Gilman 
with a letter of introduction, in which he 
stated that I was entering Hopkins for grad- 
uate study of Enghsh, after a year of study 
with — substantially repeating his former 
phrase — "the foremost teacher of EngUsh 
literature in America." 

The following spring, 1891, President 
Gilman invited Professor Winchester to 
deliver a series of lectures at Johns Hopkins, 
afterward telling Mr. Wilson that the 
phrase in the letter of introduction had 
prompted the invitation, saying he thought 
Johns Hopkins University was entitled to 
hear from "the foremost teacher of English 
hterature in America," and adding that Pro- 
fessor Winchester had justified Dr. Wil- 
son's estimate. 

Professor Winchester's Hopkins lectures 
were a brilliant academic and popular suc- 
cess. They followed a series of lectures by 
a distinguished American poet of that day, 
whose coming had been widely heralded. 
166 



MEMORIAL SERVICE 

Professor Winchester slipped among us with 
but slight preliminary announcement. It 
is with no motive of invidious comparison, 
but to elucidate a significant point about 
Professor Winchester, that I recall the cir- 
cumstance that the famous poet's audiences 
began large and ended small, and Professor 
Winchester's audiences began small and 
ended large. 

This is no reflection on the poet-critic, 
whose personahty was delightful, and who 
had many important things to tell us, but 
who was not a professional lecturer and 
probably had never surmised that pubHc 
lecturing is a profession in itself — is an art, 
and a delicate art. The poet-critic knew 
much about a number of arts, but nothing 
whatever about the particular art he was 
undertaking to practise before us, the art 
of public lecturing. The result was inevi- 
table : the general public flocked to the open- 
ing lecture, satisfied their curiosity to see 
the famous man, and did not return. The 
audiences steadily diminished until at the 
end they were made up chiefly of those of us 
who were professionally interested, who real- 
ized that the lecturer was expounding some 
167 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

important sesthetic doctrines, and who 
needed no other lure to hold us. Professor 
Winchester, with an equal amount of solid 
information, began with small professionally 
interested audiences, but the fame of him got 
abroad and the general public came each day 
in increasing numbers, until at the end of the 
course there was not even standing room in 
the lecture chamber. 

I do not need to tell this company that 
Professor Winchester resorted to none of 
the tricks by which some popular lecturers 
attract the crowd. The very artist that was 
in him, that made the lectures so excellent, 
would have abhorred mountebankish tricks 
as Hamlet's imagination abhorred the jes- 
ter's fleshless skull. The secret of his power 
was this : that he interpreted the great art of 
literature by methods themselves artistic, 
that he understood that he could not engage 
the emotional sympathy of an audience by 
merely telling them that literature is beau- 
tiful and worthy of their sympathies, but 
only by showing them the beauty, that he 
understood that if he was going to give him- 
self the trouble of lecturing, he must give 
himself the additional trouble of mastering 
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MEMORIAL SERVICE 

the arts of the lecturer: the art of fascinating 
literary composition, the art of sympathetic, 
impressive delivery. 

His voice is hushed now, and we can never 
again be reminded, except in memory, of the 
charm of his dehvery: the low expressive 
tones, the manner so quiet, yet so compel- 
ling. His sympathetic rendering of illus- 
trative passages of poetry was better than 
all the conspicuous art of the professional 
elocutionists. Indeed, Professor Winches- 
ter's art of reading was, perhaps uncon- 
sciously, the art of the great actor, who re- 
creates in his own mind the thought of his 
poet, rekindles in his own breast the poet's 
emotion, and therefore utters the poet's lines 
as if they expressed his own spontaneous 
thought and present emotion. 

As all of you remember. Professor Win- 
chester's platform manner was very quiet. 
He read verbatim from the cleanly written 
manuscript (his penmanship was clear and 
controlled, hke his character; neat, hke his 
habits, mental and personal) . I never knew 
a speaker who could at one and the same 
time read so closely and give his audiences 
such intimate impression that he was talking 
169 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

directly to them. He lectured for us in 
Princeton on Matthew Arnold, and one of 
his delighted auditors, a member of our Eng- 
lish department, told me he had not known 
that Professor Winchester had used a man- 
uscript until some one subsequently men- 
tioned the fact. It is a fine art to utter the 
written word as if it were being thought for 
the first time while the lecturer stands be- 
fore his audience. 

I am under the impression that Emerson 
employed this method — Emerson, some of 
whose books were, like some of Professor 
Winchester's books, printed lectures. The 
advantage of the method for the truly ht- 
erary lecturer, the man of letters on the plat- 
form, is obvious. Nobody can create pure 
literature extemporaneously, and yet Pro- 
fessor Winchester, hke Emerson, evidently 
believed that a lecture on hterature should 
itself be literature. So in his study he care- 
fully wrote down all the words on the page, 
and then stepped on the platform and read 
them as if they had never been written at all. 
This combination of literary finish and spon- 
taneity makes the perfect literary lecture. 

Professor Winchester had the judgment 
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MEMORIAL SERVICE 

and tact not to "talk down" to his audiences. 
Talk "over them" he must not, talk "down 
to them" he would not. He had that faith in 
his pubhc without which no one can be a 
great lecturer, or a great preacher, or a 
really great political orator. Professor Win- 
chester evidently believed that the public 
could take his best provided he should take 
the trouble to present it attractively and 
convincingly. 

At the commemoration dinner, Professor 
Rice explained interestingly why literary 
lectures of the Winchester type appeal to 
men of science more than do philological 
disquisitions. Professor Rice said that 
men, "trained to minute accuracy of obser- 
vation and cautious induction," occasionally 
attend a literary lecture for "recreation or 
inspiration" ; he added that Professor Win- 
chester's lectures gave them what they 
sought, and furthermore added that what 
always most impressed him in those lectures 
was "the harmonious union of delicacy of 
sentiment and strong common sense." 

I fancy that the type described by Pro- 
fessor Rice, a type which he himself has so 
long represented with so much distinction, 
171 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

demands of the literary lecturer sound men- 
tal processes and valid conclusions from his 
data, even though the data are non-scien- 
tific. And I venture to think that Profes- 
sor Rice would say that Professor Winches- 
ter met these requirements. For instance, 
the premises of the Principles of Literary 
Criticism are, in their nature, insusceptible 
of proof, but the reasoning from them is 
close, and the conclusions are consistent, and 
cautiously stated. I suspect that the man of 
science would be impatient with a critic of 
the type of Swinburne, who throws the reins 
on the neck of imagination and stampedes 
reason, whose adjectives are nearly all su- 
perlatives, whose self-contradictions are both 
bland and violent, of whose discretion we are 
reminded merely by the fact that it is never 
present. 

Professor Winchester's mind was closely 
analytical. He abhorred emotionalism, 
shrank from sentimentahsm with an Em- 
ersonian fastidiousness. He and Emer- 
son were fine examples of the poised New 
England character, with capacity for deep- 
est feeling, and aversion to demonstration. 
In the essay on Leigh Hunt, Professor Win- 
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MEMORIAL SERVICE 

Chester wrote, "The truth is, sentimentalism 
is always vulgar"; in the Principles of Lat- 
er ary Criticism, he wrote, "The sentimental- 
ist, the sesthete, the fanatic, are proverbially 
deformed types of character"; and at the 
commemoration dinner he said, "No really 
good literature, I think, was ever born of 
merely aesthetic impulse." These are ex- 
pressions of a fixed conviction. 

On the other hand, no man had a sounder 
understanding of the barrenness of mere 
intelligence in the realm of things hxmaan, or 
a clearer perception of the hmitations of 
mere logic in the realm of things eternal. In 
his Life of John Wesley he criticizes Wesley 
for sometimes seeming to forget "that on 
most matters of importance our conclusions 
are not the result of a single line of argu- 
ment, but the resultant of many hues; nay, 
in many cases, cannot be decided exclusively 
by argument, but rather by sentiment or 
instinct." In the Principles of Literary 
Criticism he discusses, in full value, "the in- 
tellectual element in hterature," but con- 
cludes that "the essential element in litera- 
ture is the power to appeal to the emotions." 
He always gave the impression of strength 
173 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

in reserve, because of his strong feeKng un- 
der firm control. Intellect and emotion, rea- 
son and imagination were poised in him; 
there was an harmonious proportion of 
qualities, remindful of the Greek character, 
suggesting something out of Plutarch. 

Because he could think straight while feel- 
ing deeply, he was able to appreciate truly 
and interpret soundly. Balanced by nature, 
trained by education, he conferred great ben- 
efits on cultural education in America by 
teaching younger people to think while feel- 
ing, and feel while thinking; to avoid, on the 
one side, the miry marshes of mere sestheti- 
cism, on the other side, the hard rocks of cold 
intellectualism. 

Fortunate was it for English literary edu- 
cation in America that the pioneers and 
pathfinders were men who, hke Professor 
Winchester, had been soundly trained by 
systematic educational methods. At the 
commemoration dinner. Dean Cross named 
four of these pioneers, and, on reflection, hij 
list seems complete: "Child of Harvard] 
Lounsbury and Beers of Yale, and Win- 
chester of Wesley an" — a goodly company. 
Prior to these, poets like Longfellow and 
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MEMORIAL SERVICE 

Lowell had tremendously stimulated liter- 
ary taste in the classroom, but with them 
the teaching profession was secondary, not 
primary. Rhetoricians of the old school had 
apphed the formal principles of Quintihan 
to selected passages of Enghsh literature, 
but had not systematized literary study. It 
was the small group named by Dean Cross 
who gave the historical and critical study of 
English hterature its recognized position in 
the college curriculum. 

Like the others, Professor Winchester 
had to make his own methods, which he did 
by applying to new material a mind well 
trained in old material — in the classics, 
Hebrew, logic, and philosophy. He was a 
scholar, in the old ripe sense of the term. 
He wore his scholarship so easily, so mod- 
estly, that the depth and range of his learn- 
ing might readily be undiscerned by imma- 
ture and superficial people who associate 
"scholarship" with technicalities and jargon 
and things difficult and unimportant. To 
the point is the old anecdote of Dr. Chalmers 
and the untutored man who stopped him in 
the street, and asked, "Are you the great Dr. 
Chalmers?" "I am Dr. Chalmers," was the 
175 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

modest reply. "Aye!" said the stranger, "I 
don't think you are great either, for I heard 
you preach last Sunday, and I understood 
everything you said." In true greatness 
there is always simplicity, even in truly 
great scholarship. 

The primary aim of Professor Winches- 
ter's teaching was cultural. Nowadays, 
English departments sometimes propose 
what are called "practical" aims, not expUc- 
itly recognized by him, more technical stud- 
ies of literature combined with practice for 
those who aspire to make literature — not the 
old "composition courses" but hterary prac- 
tice by a sort of "case system." Professor 
Winchester would give private assistance to 
volunteer aspirants, but the aim of his class- 
room was interpretation of the authors of 
the past rather than creation of authors for 
the future; I fancy he considered the latter 
a by-product of the former — the results "on 
the knees of the gods." 

He was a teacher born and trained, 
"nascitur et fit," as Tennyson used to say 
of the poet. Stopford Brooke's Primer of 
English Literature was a text-book when I 
was in Wesleyan. When I say that Prof es- 
176 



MEMORIAL SERVICE 

sor Winchester made that meager manual 
interesting to undergraduates, I say much — 
how much, I know from experience, from 
trying to use it with my own classes with re- 
sults just short of riot. He was a class disci- 
plinarian — not in deportment, which was 
never necessary; his mere presence brought 
respectful order — but he practised intellect- 
ual discipline by the good old "quiz" method. 
He asked definite questions, and required 
definite answers. 

I recall one youth who had gleaned vague 
notions about William Langland from a 
passage in Stopford Brooke, which imaged 
Langland grimly striding through the Lon- 
don Strand mentally rebuking folly; about 
all that stuck in the student's mind was 
Strand, and that "with a difference." He 
stammered some futiUties about Langland 
walking on the "shore." Quietly, more mem- 
orably than by sarcasm (which he never em- 
ployed). Professor Winchester said, "Never 
mind the shore; tell us what you know of 
Langland, if anything." 

It was after we had finished floundering 
that we got the joy of the exercise, when he 
began his own exegesis of the text, clothing 
177 



PROFESSOR WIlSrCHESTER 

its dry bones with flesh, and breathing life 
into it ; or when he turned to the actual works 
of the authors and illuminated them by anal- 
ysis, comment, appraisement, and sympa- 
thetic reading. 

Even in my callow youth I admired the 
ease and clarity with which he would relate 
literature to history, an author to the politi- 
cal and social forces of his time. In the Prin- 
ciples of Literary Criticism he says, "htera- 
ture is one side of history," and, in reversal, 
he used to show us, the undergraduates, that 
history is one side of literature, a new 
thought to most of us, who began to learn 
from our study of Carlyle more about the 
true nature of the democratic reform era in 
England than we had learned from formal 
history. 

What Professor Winchester said, in re- 
trospect, at the commemoration dinner, re- 
flected a conviction and a practice of many 
decades : 

If you want to understand the growth of 
thought and accompanying changes of feeling on 
matters of scientific, religious, political, and social 
importance, say, in England from 1840 to 1880, 
you must read Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, 

178 



MEMORIAL SERVICE 

Carlyle. You will find there the best record of 
the inner life of the period. 



In the class room he used the historical 
method illuminatingly, and at the same time 
warned us of its perils when pushed too far, 
as by Taine and the German "zeitgeistists," 
if I may use the term. I find in the essay 
on Hazlitt a characteristic passage on the 
advantages and limitations of the historical 
method, its uses and abuses. 

This balanced teaching was, what all 
teaching must be, an index to the mind and 
character of the teacher, the measure of 
Professor Winchester's sanity, of what Pro- 
fessor Rice calls his "strong common sense." 
His mind was simultaneously judicial and 
sympathetic — an unusual combination. His 
tastes were catholic, the range of his sym- 
pathies wide. He never told us who was his 
"favorite author." I guessed Wordsworth, 
but another old pupil, writing in Zion's Her- 
ald, guesses Burns (of course, Shakespeare 
is nobody's favorite because everybody's). 
Probably he had no favorite — there was so 
much of interest in so many. His essay on 
Leigh Hunt sheds direct light on Hunt, and 
179 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

reflected light on Winchester : an essentially 
purposeful, ethical, religious man doing jus- 
tice to and showing sympathy with an essen- 
tial dilettante. 

His mind was a translucent medium for 
the undistorted interpretation of his author. 
Sometimes critics seem unconsciously to as- 
sume God's mystery and recreate all things 
in the image of their own minds. Even 
great Goethe does not escape the charge: 
his famous analysis of Hamlet is interesting, 
but it is certainly not Shakespeare's Hamlet 
of whom he is talking. The author that 
passed through Professor Winchester's 
mind came out illumined, not transformed. 
Wide sympathies led him to understand 
many; an obhgation to truth led him to do 
strict justice to all. It was not mere kind- 
liness which induced him to recount the mer- 
its of an author whose weaknesses he had 
been mercilessly exposing. It was some- 
thing more virile, respect for truth, a trait 
as pronounced in him as in the man of sci- 
ence at work in his laboratory. 

It is a tribute to the teaching genius of 
Professor Winchester that so quiet and judi- 
cial a man, so averse to asseveration, and 
180 



MEMORIAL SEKVICE 

with none of the habits of the propagandist, 
could kindle in his pupils such flaming en- 
thusiasm for literature and special authors. 
A practical illustration was the book-buying 
habits of undergraduates of my day (of 
course, I cannot speak of later times). 
Though few were wealthy, most seemed to 
feel they must own, often at a sacrifice, the 
works of the masters whom Professor Win- 
chester had taught them to love. I have 
never known undergraduates who purchased 
so many English classics. A whimsical illus- 
tration is an incident of my undergraduate 
days, dear to the memory of President Wil- 
son, who has frequently referred to it as a 
militant example of effective teaching. A 
lad who had met Shelley in Professor Win- 
chester's classroom and become impassioned, 
one day debated with a scoffer, another un- 
dergraduate who could see nothing in Shel- 
ley, debated as long as a limited vocabulary 
permitted, and then fell upon the antagonist 
and gave him a furious beating in the sacred 
name of Shelley. 

In my one undergraduate year at Wes- 
leyan I was permitted to take the two Eng- 
lish courses then given, the junior historical 
181 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

course and the senior elective or seminary. 
Subsequently I returned for an additional 
year of graduate study. Professor Mead, 
who had joined the faculty in the interim, 
taught me to read and love Beowulf, and I 
was again admitted to Professor Winches- 
ter's seminary. Thus, it was my privilege 
to study intensively under him the so-called 
Revolutionary group (the Wordsworth- 
Byron group), and the Victorian group, in- 
cluding Carlyle, Tennyson, and Browning. 
I should say the best of Professor Win- 
chester was in this seminary, the cream, the 
fine essence of his interpretation, apprecia- 
tion, and criticism. We met, a dozen of us, 
in his study' in Old North (he generously 
put at our disposal his private library) — and 
there, in informal conference, he brought us 
as close to philosophy as he had brought us 



1 Until 1904, room 5Q North College was his study and 
seminary room and contained his working library. After 1904 
he used 21 Fisk Hall as his study, and the adjoining room, 23, 
as his seminary room, and his library was placed in these two 
rooms, accessible to his advanced students. Both in North 
College and in Fisk Hall, the rooms commanded a beautiful 
eastern prospect. By his will the library of about five thou- 
sand volumes has become the property of the University and 
remains in its accustomed location to be used by new genera- 
tions of Wesleyan students. 

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MEMORIAL SERVICE 

to history in the other course. Through the 
labyrinths of the author's mind and method, 
he led us to the inmost heart of the author's 
philosophical implications. 

He seldom morahzed. With him, reli- 
gion and morahty were an enveloping at- 
mosphere, which rendered dogma superflu- 
ous. That was well for hterature, which 
usually suffers grievous hurt when taught 
didactically. Surely, it was also well for 
the cause of morahty: surely, if we beUeve 
in morahty with his abundant faith, we 
should have his abundant confidence in its 
power to vindicate itself when simple truth 
is presented. For instance, he did not draw 
deliberate morals from the career of Robert 
Burns, his instabihty and incontinence — ^he 
did not need to. Burns was presented to us 
without admonition, sympathetically but 
truthfully, in his poetic inspiration, human 
kindness, infectious humor, and also in his 
frailty and his wreckage. The sum total was 
more tragically impressive than any moral- 
izing could have been. 

This, in my judgment, was the supremely 
great, the greatest trait of Professor Win- 
chester as a teacher — his undogmatic yet 
183 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

solemnizing interpretation of life through 
the medium of literature. He could not 
have done this so convincingly had he not 
been essentially a morahst, and he could not 
have done it so dehcately had he not been 
essentially an artist. It is easier to preach 
morality than to reveal it; easier, and more 
obvious, to extol virtue and danm vice than 
with the cunning of deep wisdom to lead 
people to see for themselves the beauty and 
the bravery of the one, the ugliness and folly 
of the other, through a faithful revelation of 
life's own values, which, in reahty, are de- 
termined by God's own laws. I recall no 
instance of Professor Winchester's lecturing 
us on our personal conduct, but the effect of 
his teaching in its totahty, reinforced, of 
course, by his own lofty character, was to 
make us solemnly aware of our inescapable 
obligations to conduct. 

All this means spiritual discernment, the 
divine tact, which is the gift of only the spir- 
itually minded. It was the same gift which 
made him a powerful interpreter of the 
spirit of Uterature — for, indeed, in his con- 
ception, the spirit of literature and the spirit 
of life are one and the same. 
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MEMORIAL SERVICE 

I recall an almost mystical incident of the 
seminary period in his study in Old North — 
of a day when he was elucidating Words- 
worth's transcendentahsm. He sat with his 
head resting on his hand, talking in low mon- 
otone, as one muses — I think he had practi- 
cally forgotten that we were there. Grad- 
ually a change came over his face — you 
might think it but my individual fancy were 
I not able to report that at least one other 
observed it and spoke of it in awed, excited 
whisper. I think several noted it, but viv- 
idly recall the one and his excitement. Pro- 
fessor Winchester had become strikingly, 
almost awesomely the visual image of 
Wordsworth himself. If you will study the 
Hay don portrait of Wordsworth, you will 
observe a general resemblance in the con- 
tour of the head and in the features ; but that 
morning there was more, much more : it was 
as if the spirit of Wordsworth had passed 
into his face while he sat in rapt communion 
with the thrice-spiritualized essence of the 
Words worthian poetry. 

Judicial, intellectual, insistent on thor- 
oughness, accuracy, clarity, all that Profes- 
sor Winchester was ; but, above all, he strove 
185 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

to impart to his pupils the spirit of litera- 
ture. He taught them to love literature 
while teaching them to know it. 

Professor Winchester, like Matthew Ar- 
nold and other nineteenth century elders, 
took a serious view of literature, both as an 
art and as a civilizing agency. It was prob- 
ably in his commemoration dinner address 
that he made his last definition of literature, 
terming it "the best thought that has been 
touched and vitalized with emotion and ut- 
tered in a manner of lasting charm," and 
adding, "Thus defined, literature is obvi- 
ously the best interpreter of life — the hfe of 
the individual man and the life of historical 
periods." 

It was his life's business to insinuate into 
the minds of the youth and the public with 
whom he came in contact respect and love 
for this thing which he deemed so important, 
performing his task faithfully as one who 
recognizes service to God in his life's work, 
and at the same time performing it deli- 
cately, not dogmatically, but by interpreta- 
tion and appreciation. He avoided the me- 
tallic method of Francis Jeffrey, who, in the 
words of Winchester, "does not aim to give 
186 



MEMORIAL SERVICE 

you an appreciation of the book, but an esti- 
mate of it." He avoided the literary dogma- 
tism of Jeffrey, who, he wrote, "is always 
cocksure," adding, perhaps with a smile, 
"which is pleasing in a critic." He himself 
was too reverent of truth and withal too 
modest to be "cocksure," and frequently em- 
ployed phrases of reservation, such as, "I 
take it," "I should say," "one thinks," "it 
seems to me." 

In two sayings, one on Hunt, one on Haz- 
litt, we find his conception of the critic's 
office and the sine qua non of his equipment : 
Hunt "had the first qualification of the 
critic, he was a lover of books," and "Haz- 
litt has in a remarkable degree the gift to 
enjoy for himself what is best in literatiu'e, 
and the gift to convey that enjoyment to his 
reader — which I take it is the chief func- 
tion of criticism." His own book, A Group 
of English Essayists, is a most happy reali- 
zation of that ideal. 

We are grateful that he published a few 
books, regretful that he did not publish 
more. The Life of John Wesley proves that 
he could challenge the professional biogra- 
phers on their own ground. William Words- 
187 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

worth: How to Know Him is probably the 
best existent guide to understanding and 
appreciation of the poet. Some Principles 
of Literary Criticism is a sound discussion of 
formal literary principles. But the most 
delightful of his books, that in which we get 
most of himself, is A Group of English Es- 
sayists of the Early Nineteenth Century. 
He who would know how Professor Win- 
chester lectured may find the answer in these 
essays, which are probably but slightly re- 
vised lectures, for his lectures, like Emer- 
son's, were literary essays. 

In one of the essays, the first in the vol- 
ume, he defines the modern essay as "ex- 
tended discussion of some one theme, pop- 
ular in manner yet accurate in statement, 
and admitting high literary finish." While 
writing about famous makers of this type of 
literary art, he proves himself their peer. 
Here, in these half-dozen essays, are the 
qualities which made his lectures nothing less 
than wonderful: the scope and the struc- 
tured ease, the tivid portrayal of his author's 
personahty through an exposition of the 
facts of his life, the elements of his charac- 
ter, the thoughts of his brain, the emotions 
188 



MEMORIAL SERVICE 

of his heart, and the qualities of his art, all 
fused into a whole. Read, for example, the 
essay on Hazhtt, and consider the scope, the 
movement, the unity of it. It opens with 
an anecdote, something concrete, to catch 
the reader's (or hearer's) attention, yet en- 
tirely pertinent to what follows — a passage 
from Hazlitt's own writings, telling how he 
first met Coleridge; then a brief account of 
the influence of Coleridge on Hazhtt; then 
a question as to why Hazlitt felt himself so 
much indebted to Coleridge; then follows 
logically a story of inherent radicalism in 
the Hazhtt family, of ancestral residence in 
America and sympathies with the American 
struggle for independence, of return to 
Europe and sympathy with French Revolu- 
tionism, of the relationship of Napoleonism 
to revolutionism and the later reactions, of 
the fascination which Napoleon had for 
WilUam Hazlitt. Here the writer pauses 
to remind us that it was natural for Hazhtt, 
under such influences, pubhc and private, to 
be attracted by the early hberaUsm of Cole- 
ridge; we have swept back to the starting 
point, but with our minds informed, and with 
the foundations laid for all that follows. 
189 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

When we have finished the essay we real- 
ize that the writer has accomphshed the 
thaumaturgy of presenting a body of ideas 
through a personahty. He has talked about 
history, philosophy, principles of criticism, 
but all the while Hazlitt himself has held the 
center of the stage. The facts of his hfe 
and the influences of his environment, and 
his thoughts and his practiced art, have all 
been fused in a unit, and that unit is a por- 
trait. That is literary art of a very high 
order. 

In the Principles of Literary Criticism 
Professor Winchester wrote, "The charm of 
all Hterature resides largely in the personal- 
ity of the author." His own lecture-essays 
illustrated that saying vividly and with dig- 
nity. He dealt with his subjects most per- 
sonally, but avoided the tone of gossip which 
he dishked in De Quincey. Forced by the 
conditions to speak of unpleasant things, 
the unhappy marital experiences of Hazlitt 
and of John Wesley, he introduced the topic 
in each instance with a phrase that warns 
the reader that he has no personal relish for 
such matters, and will hasten over them as 
quickly as possible — which he does. He 
190 



MEMORIAL SERVICE 

conceived "personality" in large terms, as 
incorporating what a man thought and wrote 
as well as what he was and did. Seldom did 
Professor Winchester write first about an 
author's "life" and then about his "works/' 
the old formal analysis, but merged the two 
in one— a portrait. He had an extraordi- 
nary power of analysis by negatives, of ex- 
plaining what a man was by explaining what 
he was not. There are whole paragraphs in 
the Lilfe of John Wesley which tell what 
Wesley was not, but out of it all comes a 
clear and definite idea of what Wesley was 
— a portrait. 

This power of portraiture was the crown- 
ing explanation of Professor Winchester's 
ability to fascinate miscellaneous audiences. 
After hearing him lecture on Hazhtt or 
Wordsworth or Browning, people left the 
hall with the impression that they had spent 
an hour with Hazhtt or Wordsworth or 
Browning. In reality, they had learned 
much more about each than they would 
have learned from an hour's talk with either. 
Imagine ourselves spending an hour with 
each of these immortals: Browning would 
refer questions concerning his poetry to the 
191 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Browning Society, would talk freely, but 
not about the things we most wished to hear 
about; Wordsworth would talk about his 
poetry, but so prosaically as to make us won- 
der why we had ever cared for his poetry; 
Hazlitt probably would not talk at all. 

Combined with these larger architectural 
qualities, was that elusive, but very real 
thing, which is called literary style, a style 
that was easy, fluent, limpid, lucid. Like 
Wilham Dean Howells, whose departure we 
are also lamenting now, Professor Winches- 
ter mastered a style which he never permit- 
ted to master him — the skillful phrase, the 
epigram, the simile, the metaphor, the hu- 
morous turn — they were all there for service, 
not for display. 

He was as lucid as Matthew Arnold, or 
"Mr. Arnold," as Professor Winchester usu- 
ally called liim, with a touch of old-time 
courtesy. I am bold to say that Professor 
Winchester's devices for lucidity were supe- 
rior to Arnold's. Arnold would reiterate 
the identical phrase imtil repetition became 
a mannerism, suggesting affectation, as if 
Arnold were saying, "Behold how lucid I 
am!" Professor Winchester's method was 
192 



MEMORIAL SERVICE 

subtler, the thought repeated and reinforced 
by a variant phrase. To illustrate with one 
of many examples: he is talking of De 
Quincey's discursiveness; he says: "He [De 
Quincey] must pull his thought up by the 
roots, and then trace out with laborious pre- 
cision all its minute filaments, and its ram- 
ifications into a network of other thought." 
Having completed that sentence, Professor 
Winchester adds, "Everything reminds him 
of something else." That is admirable: the 
clarification is not by mere repetition, but by 
making the long and short sentences mutu- 
ally support each other. The short sentence 
by itself would be too indefinite, too much 
mere epigram, cryptic, elusive. The long 
sentence by itself is clear, but, if I may use 
the expression, it lacks "punch." The 
"punch" of the appended epigram enforces 
the thought, and makes it stick in the read- 
er's (or hearer's) mind. 

Professor Winchester was singularly 
without hterary mannerisms. Of course, 
every writer has some pet words — "unctu- 
ous," "factitious," "stodgy" were character- 
istic words of Professor Winchester's, which 
I used to hear in the classroom and now find 
193 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

in the printed books, but, in general, his 
style was without self -consciousness. In- 
deed, it is so without display that, if we are 
heedless, we shall overlook its excellences: 
its rhythm (he himself said that " the crown- 
ing grace of prose is a good rhythm"), the 
aptness of his imagery, and his epigrams. 
Self-conscious writers put their epigrams on 
exhibition, as shopkeepers set their smart- 
est wares in the show window, but Professor 
Winchester employed them only when they 
were serviceable^and they were ready-to- 
hand when he needed them. 

How pithy and pertinent are his epi- 
grams! For instance, this: "If a man has 
resolved never to change his mind, it doesn't 
much matter what he thinks"; or, Hazlitt 
"had the peculiarly happy fortune of van- 
quishing his antagonist and losing his cause ; 
and thus enjoyed at once the pride of vic- 
tory and the pride of martyrdom." The 
point of Professor Winchester's epigrams 
is that they probe human nature. All the 
learning in the world, all the reading of a 
lifetime cannot make a man of letters of 
him who is ignorant of human nature. Lit- 
erature in ? larger meaning is simply an 
194 



MEMORIAL SERVICE 

illustration of life. To know human nature 
searchingly and yet sympathetically is part 
of the equipment of the man of letters, and 
Professor Winchester was fully armed. 

He thought easily and naturally in im- 
agery. In simple but telhng metaphor he 
explains why the essays of John Wilson 
("Christopher North"), once so popular, 
are now so hard to read: "The effervescent 
humor has lost its bubble now, and tastes a 
little flat on the palate." There is a really 
superb simile in the essay on Charles Lamb, 
which relates how loquacious guests would 
gather in Lamb's rooms on his "Wednes- 
day evenings," and how "on some rare and 
famed occasion, the heavy form of Coleridge 
himself comes toiling uncertainly up the 
stair, and his great forehead, like the dome 
of Paul's in the babble of London, throws a 
high dignity over the company." 

With this lambent phraseology Professor 
Winchester combined a humor of the type 
we call "Yankee," droll, sometimes as sly as 
Chaucer's, who, though no Yankee, antici- 
pated some Yankee traits of speech (many 
of the good things which we call new are 
really very old). When Professor Win- 
195 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Chester wrote that "HazHtt was never ambi- 
tious of mere smartness," he said something 
appheable to himself. He used his humor, 
as he used his imagery, to interpret his sub- 
ject. But I have heard audiences cooing 
with low sympathetic laughter as Professor 
Winchester unostentatiously pointed truth 
with wit. Wit, metaphor, and epigram are 
triple feathers to wing a dart of truth in his 
saying that Hazlitt "took care that his best 
friendships should not grow stagnant by 
long standing." Gentle but telhng is his 
rebuke of George Saintsbury's rash super- 
latives in the quiet remark: "Mr. Saint sbury 
pronounces Wilson's descriptions of scenery 
better than anything of the kind in Enghsh 
prose ; but I think he must have forgotten a 
good deal to say that." Sometimes the droll- 
ery is sly and will escape us unless we are 
alert: for instance, he speaks of Leigh 
Hunt's notorious laxity in money matters, in 
the early part of the essay on Hunt ; later he 
is speaking of Hunt's sentimental antipathy 
to the stern Jehovah of the Old Testament, 
and concludes with, "To punishment he was 
mildly but firmly opposed ; it was a form of 
payment." 

196 



MEMORIAL SERVICE 

He had an American habit of chnching a 
point with a quotation from a typical, myth- 
ical, or "traditional" Irishman. Often in 
class have we first laughed at that Irishman's 
remark, and a moment later admired the 
clever application of it to the matter under 
discussion. Sometimes I half suspected an 
innocent invention, the creation of the Irish- 
man for the occasion, if anecdotage and Pro- 
fessor Winchester's memory failed to supply 
the remark needed for the particular point. 
Whether invention or quotation, it was al- 
ways most apt — as in the essay on John Wil- 
son where he is commenting on Wilson's 
boisterous, over-emphatic, unshaded literary 
manner, and says, "Wilson writes as the tra- 
ditional Irishman played the violin, *by main 
strength.' " 

So human a man as Professor Winchester 
partakes of life in many capacities. Impor- 
tant phases of his career I have not touched : 
the faculty committeeman, the churchman, 
the citizen, the personal friend, the husband 
and father. I have talked of him only as 
teacher, lecturer, critic, and man of letters 
— the leading terms of a comprehensive pro- 
fession to which he gave half a century and 
197 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

his strength. He was aware of the wide and 
busy world, for the windows of his mind 
opened outward. But the stir of the world's 
activity could not lure him from the quiet 
ways of teaching and literature; here was 
his life's business, and here he found his sat- 
isfaction. 

And "here" also means Wesley an. It is 
common knowledge that other universities 
made repeated efforts to tempt him away, 
but here he elected to remain. Wesleyan's 
is an honorable history. No college is more 
secure in its position, more assured of the 
respect of the informed. Wesleyan has a 
tradition and an ideal, both founded in a 
purpose, clear, defined, sustained. Her past 
is a benediction, her future an inspiration. 
Wesleyan has had able servitors to translate 
her ideals into accomplishment. Great men 
have investigated nature in these laborato- 
ries and taught within these ivied walls. 
Though their labors were apart from the 
world's busy marts, the world has felt their 
influence, for they assisted in pushing a little 
further back the clouds of ignorance and in 
kindling the flame of knowledge to enlighten 
the world's path to progress. Many and 
198 



i 



MEMORIAL SEKVICE 

pressing are the modern problems of educa- 
tion, but the chief problem, now as formerly, 
is to educate. Wesleyan has always been 
faithful to the initial duty. Her sons have 
gone forth educated. Some of these teach- 
ers are still here, others have gone to labor 
in other fields, yet others have ceased from 
earthly toil. Conspicuous among these men 
of learning and of light was Professor Win- 
chester. Now he has left us to take his place 
among the immortals who have left the world 
better for having lived in it. 

We who remain shall miss him sorely ; but 
we reverently and fervently thank God for 
having lent him to the world for a lifetime ; 
and over his earthly mound we murmur fa- 
miliar words from a play of Shakespeare's 
that was dear to him : 

Quiet consummation have; 
And renowned be thy grave. 



199 



MEMORIAL EXERCISES 

FOR 

PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

AT 

WILBRAHAM ACADEMY 

APRIL 11, 1920 



MEMORIES OF PROFESSOR WIN- 
CHESTER AT SCHOOL AND 
COLLEGE 

By Rev. Alfred Noon' 

More than a half century ago the class 
which, in the later enumeration of the school, 
was known as that of 1865, looked askance 
at one another in Wilbraham. Had it not 
been for the fact that half the members were 
ladies, it would have been possible to form a 
rather conspicuous awkward squad. 

Those were stirring times and they had 
their effect upon all the students. A consid- 
erable number of the class as graduated en- 
tered in 1863, in a very dark period of the 
Civil War. Thrilhng news came often, dis- 
turbing the calroness of the cloistered popu- 
lace of the school. In the midst of such days 
Caleb Winchester arrived in Wilbraham. 
He did not make much impression at first. 
He was shy, towheaded, shght of build, and 
a tremendous fellow to dig. His life in an 

^ His classmate in Wilbraham Academy and in Wesleyan 
University. 

203 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

itinerant's home had taught him to be frugal 
and dependable. 

After a few recitations, the classes and 
the professors began to take notice, and con- 
tinued to do so until the bells at Middletown 
tolled his requiem. It is doubtful if he ever 
said "not prepared" at Wilbraham, and 
probably he never "smashed," as we called 
a total failure in college. 

There was one peculiarity about Caleb — 
or, as we soon christened him, "Winch" — he 
really acted as if he liked Latin. Even the 
Latin prose so far appealed to him that he 
would make a fluent and accurate recitation. 
He also admired and diligently studied the 
Greek, marching cheerful "parasangs" along 
its pathways. 

But what appealed most to "Winch," even 
then, was literature. The reaUy good li- 
brary at the Academy, then up on the hill, 
afforded him many an hour of valuable 
study. It was probably then that he formed 
his taste for belles-lettres and laid the foun- 
dation for a brilliant career. 

There was much at the Wilbraham of the 
'sixties which appealed to a student of taste. 
The fields were never greener than then, the 
204 



EXERCISES AT WILBRAHAM 

gurgle of the modest Rubicon on the campus 
was veritable music, the trees of the moun- 
tain and walks about the Dell and else- 
where were inspiring. Hymettus had a 
rival in Mount Marcy, nor did the amaranth 
and the lotus for a moment outvie the pond 
hUes and the laurels of Wilbraham. In such 
scenes, among autumn breezes and winter 
storms and springtime zephyrs, the very dei- 
ties of letters seemed to kiss his brow and 
train his pen. 

Even we who were members of the class 
look back with great respect upon the bud- 
ding geniuses we were sure had come to 
grace and honor old Wilbraham. That was 
quite a program we put out June 28, 186^5. 
"Winch" had the salutatory, and we were all 
glad when he set the ball rolling by a disser- 
tation, given in the English pronujiciation, 
on "Nostrae Expectationes." The topics, 
as a whole, covered all the realms of thought 
and activity. There were twenty-four ora- 
tions and essays — a full entertainment, cer- 
tainly. Three of the men became college 
presidents, and Winchester won greater 
fame as a professor than came to any of the 
three; two became lawyers; one still dis- 
205 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

penses pills ; six became clergymen ; and one 
of the women became a prodigy in higher 
science, and one the wife of the beloved pro- 
fessor "Ben" Gill, and is to be credited with 
many of the quahties which brought him such 
success. Such, with hosts of other students 
— for we were nearly four hundred in all — 
were Winchester's associates and friends. 

Nor should the occasion pass without ref- 
erence to the faculty. In our first year we 
had the peerless Dr. Miner Raymond, one 
of the best of Methodism's gifts to the guild 
of teachers and educational managers. His 
keen eye, his lucid style, his quick wit, and 
his abounding sympathy are not forgotten 
in the flight of years. Then we had Chester, 
exact and animated, and Kimpton, polished 
and appealing, and Lorenzo White, a httle 
angular in appearance but as upright as a 
forest giant. 

While Winchester did not particularly 
cultivate the social life, he was always a quiet 
favorite. His playful translation of the 
Greek form of his given name, revealed the 
surname of one of the leading ladies of the 
class. He was quite at home in the "inter- 
view" and knew where to go on the May 
206 



EXERCISES AT WILBRAHAM 

walk and the chestnut walk. He was very 
useful in the literary society and eagerly em- 
braced its opportunities. 

It is very pleasant to recall his religious 
life, which, however, developed much in the 
college days. He was especially fond of the 
fine hymns of the church, and would fairly 
be in ecstasy when "There is a land of pure 
dehght" was simg to the Uvely tune of "Va- 
rina." Chapel did not seem to him to be 
irksome, and the college prayer meetings of 
the old class of 1869 often found him present 
and active. 

There are few examples more conspicuous 
or more to be remembered of the cultured 
Christian gentleman than that of Professor 
Winchester. How great a boon to the age 
was his half -century of service in the profes- 
sor's chair at Middletown! Yet the forma- 
tive period was back in the war-wrecked 
'sixties, when old Wilbraham put him in 
training for his life work. 



207 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER: 
A MODEL SON OF WILBRAHAM 

AN APPRECIATION 

By Professor Karl P. Harrington 

While it is impossible in the few mo- 
ments at our command here to do justice to 
the memory of such a gentleman, scholar, 
critic, educator, friend, and Christian as was 
our beloved Professor Winchester, it is nev- 
ertheless eminently appropriate to spend 
even the short time available in briefly re- 
viewing his life and work as a Wilbraham 
student of the older days, as an exemplar of 
the Wilbraham ideal in scholarship, in char- 
acter, and in Christian service, and as pro- 
tagonist of the new Wilbraham. For his life 
and character have a vital interest for the 
present generation of Wilbraham students, 
upon whom rests the burden of realizing in 
the school of to-day the ideal of our fore- 
most Wilbrahamite. 

Professor Winchester's loving devotion to 
this old school amounted to a ruling passion. 
208 



EXERCISES AT WILBRAHAM 

To it as the scene of his youthful affections, 
inspirations, and newly awakened scholarly 
ambition, his heart ever reverted fondly. 
The friendships begun here were for hf e, and 
among his most precious treasures. Dear 
old Ben Gill and George Reed and various 
others too numerous to name were his life- 
long cronies; and he never ceased to praise 
the hills and woods and waters and nooks 
where in his young manhood with these kin- 
dred spirits he had roved at will and dreamed 
of the future. It was with fairly boyish de- 
light that with a httle group of classmates 
he celebrated his fiftieth anniversary reunion 
by wandering up and down these same hill- 
sides and loitering in the Dell, and mak- 
ing the welkin ring with the old songs of a 
half -century ago. 

Here, too, it was that those scholarly ideals 
were firmly established which formed the 
basis of his inimitable success in the field of 
literature. To haunt a hbrary; to love the 
beautiful in Hterature as well as everywhere 
else; to cultivate breadth of view; to know 
his authors as persons whose genius and 
character became so famihar that they 
seemed like his friends and companiojis; to 
209 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

hate shams and love the expression that rings 
true; to associate with a book till he could 
see through it and its author, analyze them, 
and sum up the essence of a work of genius 
in a few words ; to give vent to his rich gift 
of humor; to practise graceful and elegant 
reading and speech; to love the intellectual 
hfe and not to be afraid of hard thinking — 
of these characteristics of his eminent schol- 
arship he laid here the foundation, not the 
least of the important influences that pro- 
duced these results coming to him through 
his membership in the venerable literary and 
debating society of his choice. 

And here was fostered and developed that 
genuine Christianity which this old school 
has always aimed to teach and exemphfy, 
and which thousands of old Wilbraham stu- 
dents look back upon as the best gift of the 
historic academy. A simple faith, a gentle 
and consistent life, a love of mankind, and a 
devotion of every day to God's service 
were his traits. He knew no distinction be- 
tween "sacred" and "secular," but to him 
the daily task, however humble — in fact, all 
worthy work — was God's work. 

These were the principles upon which 
210 



EXERCISES AT WILBRAHAM 

was built so broad and successful and use- 
ful a life. And when, after the lapse of 
years, in the midst of changing educational 
policies, the old school had reached a criti- 
cal point where a new form and a more mod- 
ern type of life were essential, it was Pro- 
fessor Winchester who consistently and 
triumphantly advocated and planned for the 
new school with a vision that often antici- 
pated that of many of his colleagues on the 
board of trustees. For years he dreamed of 
the reorganization that is now an accom- 
plished fact. His vision is amply justified 
imder the present able administration of the 
school, and his judgment finds daily vindi- 
cation. It was thus eminently fitting that 
he should have been the first president of the 
board under the new regime, and should have 
lived to see the reahzation of his hopes in 
the development of the school where he had 
begun his notable career. Many of his hap- 
piest moments in later years were spent from 
time to time at just such hearthfire gather- 
ings as this one where our memorial service 
is being held to-night, and many of you have 
listened on such occasions to his sympathetic 
and inspiring words to the group of those 
211 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

whom he could think of as his boys. May 
all Wilbraham students cherish his memory 
as that of one who exemphfied the ideal 
product of the school that he so dearly loved I 



212 



RESOLUTIONS ' 

IN MEMORY OF 

PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

AND OTHER TRIBUTES 



EXTRACT FROM A MEMOIR EN- 
TERED IN THE MINUTES OF 
THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES, 
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 

The most significant event of the year was 
the coronation, on earth and in heaven, of 
Caleb Thomas Winchester, our matchless 
professor of English literature. . . . 

For many years Professor Winchester . . . 
was Wesley an' s fairest, finest ornament. 
The classical charm, the perfect diction, the 
chaste dignity, the clear, unerring analysis, 
the vivid descriptions and picturing power in 
his lectures and writings made him a model 
of pure, vital, racy English style. . . . 

But Professor Winchester's rare ability, 
acquirements, and literary mastery were not 
the noblest of his gifts to his alma mater. 
Greatest of all was his . . . devotion to his 
students. His laborious patience in his 
work with them was unsurpassed. His ex- 
ample exacted from them similar applica- 
tion. . . . 

His devotion to his own mother-college 
was equal to his sacrificing love to his stu- 
215 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

dents. Tempted away from Wesleyan by 
larger colleges and rich universities, east and 
west, with higher salary and less toilsome 
duties, he dechned their flattering invita- 
tions and spent his whole splendid Hfe in the 
service of his alma mater. 

No praise can pay the debt, no words ex- 
press the gratitude, due to such a man for 
such services joyfully rendered through 
fifty magnificent years. . . . 
June 19, 1920. 

William Valentine Kelley, 

William Arnold Shanklin, 

John Gribbel, 

Frank Kirkwood Hallock. 



216 



EXTRACT FROM THE MINUTES 
OF THE FACULTY OF WES- 
LEYAN UNIVERSITY, 

Maech 25, 1920 

The Vice-President reported that he had 
appointed a committee, consisting of Profes- 
sors Crawford, Mead, and Farley, to draw 
up resolutions in memory of Professor Win- 
chester. The committee presented the fol- 
lowing, which were adopted by a rising vote : 

By the death of Caleb Thomas Winchester 
Wesleyan has been deprived of one of the most 
widely known and best loved members of her fac- 
ulty. Added to the teaching staff of the univer- 
sity shortly after his graduation in 1869, he was 
from the outset recognized as an independent 
thinker and as a brilliant and inspiring teacher. 
With rare modesty, uniformly disclaiming close 
acquaintance with any matter outside his chosen 
field, he brought to the classroom an intimate 
knowledge not only of the entire range of modern 
English literature but of the great subjects that 
combine to make a liberal education. For well 
nigh half a century his interpretation of litera- 
ture has shaped the thinking and guided the taste 
of nearly every student of Wesleyan University. 
His standards of literary excellence have been 

217 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

the ideal which nearly two generations of pupils 
have endeavored to realize in their own work. In 
his personal relations with his students and his 
colleagues Professor Winchester uniformly showed 
an exquisite courtesy and a marked consideration 
for views that differed widely from his own. But 
his opinions were always so well grounded and 
presented so persuasively that he not infrequently 
convinced his most determined opponents. 

We cannot yet realize in full the debt that 
Wesleyan owes to Professor Winchester, but we 
can see throughout his life a singleness of purpose 
and a devotion to duty that reflect the high Chris- 
tian character of one who walked as ever in his 
great Taskmaster's eye. 



218 



RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY 

THE COLLEGE BODY OF WES- 

LEYAN UNIVERSITY 

In Memoriam 
Professor Caleb T. Winchester 

Whereas, God in his infinite love and 
knowledge has chosen to call Caleb T. Win- 
chester, our beloved guide, teacher, and 
friend, from our college group ; and 

Whereas, We mourn the loss of his 
gentle and inspiring character and appreci- 
ate his hfe of generous service and unswerv- 
ing devotion to our college; therefore, be it 
Resolved: That we, the undergraduates 
of Wesleyan University, do hereby extend 
to his family our deepest sympathy ; and be 
it further 

Resolved: That copies of these resolutions 
be given to the bereaved family, written into 
the records of the college body, and pub- 
hshed in the Wesleyan Argus, 

Raymond A. Dousseau, 
Edward E. Dixon, 
Byron D. MacDonald, 

For the College Body. 
219 



RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY XI 
CHAPTER OF PSI UPSILON 

Whereas^ God in his infinite wisdom has 
seen fit to take from our midst our beloved 
professor, friend, and brother, Caleb 
Thomas Winchester, and 

Whereas, The Xi Chapter of Psi Up- 
silon does very deeply feel the loss of so true 
and loyal a brother, be it 

Resolved, That we extend to the members 
of his bereaved family our deepest and most 
heartfelt sympathy; and be it further 

Resolved, That copies of these resolutions 
be sent to his family and communicated to 
the public through the medium of the proper 
publications. 

For the Chapter, 

George F. Bickford, 
Milton S. Andrews. 



220 



EXTRACT FROM A MINUTE 

ADOPTED BY THE WESLEYAN 

UNIVERSITY CLUB OF NEW 

YORK 

. . . Since Professor Winchester summed 
up so well in himself and in his career the 
ideals of Wesleyan ; since he was so supreme 
an embodiment of the best that Wesleyan 
can produce ; since the lovable nobility, dig- 
nity, loyalty, charity, and integrity of his 
character, and the sweetness and hght of his 
scholarship have been so wrought into the 
most precious traditions of Wesleyan; be it 

Resolved, That the Wesleyan University 
Club of New York record its recognition of 
the irreparable loss it has suffered in the 
death of Professor Winchester by incorpo- 
rating this minute in the permanent records 
of the Club and by sending a copy thereof 
to Mrs. Winchester and to the Secretary of 
the Wesleyan Alumni Coimcil/ 

May 8, 1920. 

* This minute was drafted by Cornelius Roach Berrien, *96. 

221 



EXTRACT FROM THE MINUTES 
OF THE NEW YORK EAST AN- 
NUAL CONFERENCE OF 
THE METHODIST EPIS- 
COPAL CHURCH 

Thursday, March 25, 1920. 

Death of Professor Winchester, — ^W. A. 
Shanklin announced the death of Professor 
C. T. Winchester, of Wesleyan University. 
On motion of F. M. North, it was ordered 
that a committee on a minute for pubhca- 
tion be appointed, composed of those who 
had graduated from Wesleyan University 
during the five decades of Professor Win- 
chester's service. W. A. Shanklin and A. B. 
Sanford were designated to name this com- 
mittee. It was ordered that a telegram of 
sympathy be immediately sent to Mrs. Win- 
chester. 

The committee on a minute for the Jour- 
nal concerning Professor C. T. Winchester 
was announced by W. A. Shanklin, as fol- 
lows: G. P. Mains, F. M. North, D. G. 
Downey, W. E. Scofield, F. B. Upham, 
222 



RESOLUTIONS 

F. W. Hannan, J, W. Langdale, W. B. 
Maskiell. 

Tuesday, March 30, 1920. 

Death of Professor C, T, Winchester, — - 
The following resolution on the death of 
Professor C. T. Winchester, of Wesleyan 
University, was presented by F. B. Upham 
for the special committee, and was unani- 
mously adopted by a rising vote : 

The New York East Conference, having heard 
with profound sorrow of the death of Caleb 
Thomas Winchester, LL.D., for nearly fifty years 
professor of English Hterature in Wesleyan Uni- 
versity, hereby lovingly records its admiration 
for his unsurpassed ability in the field of his activ- 
ity, its pride in his distinguished achievements, 
giving a name and a place among American uni- 
versities to the college he loved, and its gratitude 
for the singular charm and beauty of a life pure 
in word and deed, "without fear and without re- 
proach." 

His memory will ever be cherished wherever his 
alma mater is known and loved, and wherever 
among us English literature is studied for its 
beauty and its strength. With gratitude to God 
that we have been permitted to claim anything of 
gracious intimacy with him and anything of 
guidance at his hand, we enter this minute ex- 
pressing our esteem and sorrow. 

223 



RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY 
THE OFFICIAL BOARD OF THE 
FIRST METHODIST EPISCO- 
PAL CHURCH, MIDDLE- 
TOWN, CONNECTICUT 

The official board of the First Methodist 
Episcopal Church of Middletown, Connec- 
ticut, deem it fitting to record their profound 
sense of the loss which the church has suf- 
fered in the death of Caleb Thomas Win- 
chester, professor of English literature in 
Wesleyan University. Professor Winches- 
ter's high scholarship in his chosen depart- 
ment, his inspiring qualities as a teacher, his 
ability as lecturer and author, won for him 
high fame in literary and educational circles. 
The honor which he worthily gained was a 
help to the influence and usefulness of the 
church with which he was connected. 

But at present our thought is occupied 
especially, not with his literary achievements 
and his influence in educational life, but with 
his relation to the church of which he was a 
member for more than half a century. Pro- 
fessor Winchester first made public profes- 
224 



RESOLUTIONS 

sion of his allegiance to Christ while a stu- 
dent in the academy at Wilbraham, of which 
at the time of his death he was president of 
the board of trustees. He was deeply inter- 
ested not only in the life and work of the 
local church but in the general life and work 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the 
home land and in the mission field. In 1904 
he was a member of the General Conference. 
He was a frequent contributor to the Meth- 
odist Review, The Christian Advocate, and 
Zion's Herald. While many of his articles 
dealt with Hterary topics, the themes of 
others related to the life and work of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. He was a 
most influential member of the commission 
which edited the last and best of the hymnals 
which have been prepared for the Methodist 
Episcopal Church. The hymnal from which 
we gain so much inspiration in our church 
services is to us a memorial of Professor 
Winchester. He was the author of one 
hymn and of one tune in the collection. But 
the excellence of the book as a whole is 
largely due to his sound judgment and fine 
literary taste. 

In our week-night prayer meetings his 
32d 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

voice in prayer and song and testimony was 
always helpful and inspiring. While he 
was constant in his attendance and helpful 
in his participation in our ordinary services, 
his wide knowledge, his sympathy with all 
human interests, his eloquence, and at times 
his genial humor made it a delight to listen 
to him in lectures and addresses on various 
special occasions connected with the work 
of the church. The brilliant pageant which 
illustrated our centennial celebration owed 
much to his appreciation of church history 
and to his dramatic skill. His great gifts 
were always at the service of the church that 
he loved. But greater than all gifts are the 
graces which he exemplified in his life. We 
are grateful for the memory of his humble 
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and his broth- 
erly love to all who were associated with 
him in the fellowship of the church. Our 
profound sympathy is with Mrs. Winches- 
ter and other members of his family in their 
bereavement. May the faith in the heav- 
enly Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ 
which inspired the hfe of him who has gone 
before be their comfort. 



226 



RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE 
CONVERSATIONAL CLUB, 
MIDDLETOWN, CONNEC- 
TICUT 

In the death of Caleb Thomas Winches- 
ter, professor of Enghsh literature in Wes- 
leyan University, the Conversational Club 
has lost a member prominent in the respect 
and love of his associates. 

At the time of his death Professor Win- 
chester was almost at the head of the roll of 
members in the order of seniority, having 
been a member for a httle more than half 
a century. 

We always listened with dehght and ad- 
miration to the papers which he presented. 
Naturally his papers were mostly on sub- 
jects relating to the literature of our Eng- 
lish language. They were characterized by 
an intensely human interest. The authors 
whom he loved were his friends and com- 
panions. He introduced us into their friend- 
ship, and our lives were made richer by that 
fellowship. His criticisms were eminently 
characterized by sanity. His exposures of 
227 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

literary abnormalities and monstrosities 
were as interesting as they were wholesome. 
In the Conversational Club we had the first 
hearing of many interesting studies subse- 
quently given to a larger pubHc in popular 
lectures or in publications. His papers, 
however, were by no means exclusively lit- 
erary. They covered a considerable range 
of subjects, especially philosophical and reli- 
gious. Whatever might be the topic, his 
papers had the same characteristic charm of 
a style simple, transparently clear, remark- 
able ahke for elegance and force. He was 
not only a good talker, but also a good lis- 
tener. He was interested in the discussions 
of the club, and his utterances were always 
words fitly spoken. 

He was a most delightful participant in 
the social life of the club. His genial humor 
enHvened our conversations. His genuine 
kindliness of spirit was a dehght to all. He 
was eminently a clubable man. 

His purity and sincerity of character al- 
ways and everywhere commanded respect. 
He pubhcly professed allegiance to Christ 
and to the Christian church before the begin- 
ning of his college life. He was ever loyal 
228 



RESOLUTIONS 

to that branch of the Christian church of 
which he was a member by inheritance and 
by choice. But he was always in hearty 
sympathy with all phases of hf e and thought 
wherein the true spirit of Christianity found 
expression. He was a loyal and public-spir- 
ited citizen. He was profoundly interested 
in every movement for the betterment of any 
phase of human life. To him nothing human 
was ahen. His life was an example of obe- 
dience to the two great commandments of 
love to God and love to man. 

Our hearty sympathy is with the members 
of his family in their bereavement; but, 
amid their grief for one so loving and so 
loved, theirs is the priceless treasure of the 
abiding memory of a pure and noble and 
fruitful life. 
April 12, 1920. 

William North Rice, 
AzEL Washburn Hazen. 
William Edward Mead. 



229 



PERSONAL TRIBUTES TO PRO- 
FESSOR WINCHESTER 

In addition to the expressions of appre- 
ciation recorded elsewhere in this volume it 
seems fitting that from the mass of letters 
and telegrams received from friends and 
former students, either by Professor Win- 
chester himself at the time of the compli- 
mentary dinner or by Mrs. Winchester af- 
ter Professor Winchester's death, a few 
should be chosen for permanent record in 
this place. 

The following have been selected from the 
large number of telegrams: 

The White House, Washington, D. C, 
March 27, 1920. 
Mrs. Caleb Winchester, 
Middletown, Conn. 

May I not express my heartfelt sympathy for 
you in the loss of your husband, for whom I had 
the most affectionate esteem. 

WooDRow Wilson. 
[Professor in Wesleyan University, 1888-1890.] 

230 



RESOLUTIONS 

New York, March 24, 1920. 

Mes. C. T. Winchester, 
Middletown, Conn. 

Please accept our affectionate sympathy in 
this hour of great sorrow. Wesleyan men every- 
where will mourn with you the loss of our dear 
friend and leader. 

John C. Clark. 
[Wesleyan '86, President of Board of Trustees, Wesleyan 
University.] 

Buffalo, N. Y., March 25, 1920. 

Mrs. C. T. Winchester, 
Middletown, Conn. 

Of all the men I have been privileged to know 
no one has ever claimed a larger part of my ad- 
miration and affection than Professor Winchester. 
I am thankful for his most helpful influence over 
my life. Mrs. Burt joins me in heartfelt sympa- 
thy in this hour of your sorrow. 

William Burt. 

[WesIeyaB '79, Bishop of Methodist Episcopal Church.] 

Lawrenceville, N. J., March 26, 1920. 

Mrs. C. T. Winchester, 
Middletown, Conn. 

Have just learned of the passing on of dear 
Professor Winchester. Cannot adequately ex- 
press our sense of great and irreparable loss. He 
was beloved by us as teacher, friend, scholar, man. 
231 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

His life was an unfailing inspiration. Accept our 
sincere sympathy. 

Charles Henry Raymond, '77. 
Charles Harlow Raymond, '99. 

North Wilbraham, Mass., March M, 1920. 

Mrs. C. T. Winchester, 
Middletown, Conn. 

Mrs. Douglass joins me in loving sympathy, 
tender thoughts, and earnest prayers for your 
comfort and strength. We feel very deeply the 
sorrow which has come to you and to us. Wil- 
braham has lost its greatest friend and most lov- 
ing and loyal son. 

Gaylord W. Douglass, 
[Wesleyan *00, Headmaster, Wilbraham Academy.] 

At the time of the complimentary dimier. 
Professor Winchester received letters of 
most grateful appreciation from a large 
number of his former students. As an il- 
lustration of those received from his pupils 
who have followed him in the career of teach- 
ing literature, the following extract from a 
letter by Frederick William Roe, '97, As- 
sociate Professor of English and Junior 
Dean of the College of Letters and Science 
in the University of Wisconsin, may be 
quoted: 

232 



RESOLUTIONS 

My heart will be with you all, just the same. 
As the years have come and gone since I have 
graduated (now twenty-two years ago!) I have 
had an increasingly clear perception of what your 
teaching has meant to me. Yours was one of the 
voices at Wesleyan in those years that went to my 
inmost heart and awakened or created ideals and 
interests that have kept me going ever since — 
however far short of the goal I have come ! Your 
teaching of literature, your opening to us boys 
of the magic doors of English poetry, and all 
poetry — who that have ever been in your classes 
will ever forget the charm and power of that teach- 
ing? Your interpretation of Chaucer and 
Spenser, of Wordsworth and Keats, and, most of 
all, your reading of them, have made it forever 
impossible for us to love any but the masters. 
Surely Newman's voice could not have meant more 
to Arnold in his undergraduate years than yours 
has meant to hundreds of us Wesleyan men who 
have been fortunate enough to come under your 
instruction. 

It is a very great pleasure to acknowledge the 
privilege of this instruction, especially upon the 
occasion of the Winchester dinner. With all my 
heart I congratulate you upon the completion of 
a long and distinguished service to Wesleyan, to 
the profession of teaching, and (may I say it 
again?) to the teaching of poetry ^ — poetry with 
its beauty and its noble criticism of life. 

That Professor Winchester was also ap- 
233 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

predated by those who were permitted to 
take but a single course with him is typically 
illustrated in the following extract from a 
letter written by Edward Loranus Rice, '92, 
Professor of Zoology in Ohio Wesleyan 
University : 

I look back to your course in "Junior Lit." as 
an ideal course, although, as you know, my special 
interests then, as now, were in very different lines. 
Did you know that that course of yours was the 
only non-scientific elective I took in Wesleyan? 
And I was mighty proud that I was eligible for 
your senior course, although my schedule was so 
full that I could not take the course. 

Another expression from one of Profes- 
sor Winchester's pupils who has since gradu- 
ation been engaged in the teaching of htera- 
ture and who was for a brief time a colleague 
of Professor Winchester in the department 
of English in Wesleyan University, is con- 
tained in the following extract from a letter 
written after Professor Winchester's death 
by George Wiley Sherburn, '06, Assistant 
Professor of English in the University of 
Chicago : 

Certainly I have not said as often as I should 
how entirely my progress as a student and a 

234 



RESOLUTIONS 

teacher has been due to him. I shall never have 
any other human model than Professor Winches- 
ter. For me he is and will be the ideal combina- 
tion of scholarship, teaching ability, and person- 
ality. I hope I shall continue to take every oppor- 
tunity to come back to Wesleyan ; but with Pro- 
fessor Winchester gone, the main pleasure of 
coming will no longer be there. 

You must find some comfort for your great loss 
in his magnificent achievement. When Sir Wal- 
ter Raleigh, who is or was Professor at Oxford, 
visited Chicago two or three years ago, he told a 
group of our English professors here that Mr. 
Winchester was the most interesting man he had 
met in America — and he had met about all that 
America had to offer in our profession.^ 
You must also find consolation in the fact that 
Professor Winchester was prepared to go and 
worthy to be taken. I have never known a nobler, 
more dignified Christian. 

Perhaps no letter of sympathy reveals 
more clearly Professor Winchester in his 

^ At a dinner given in honor of Sir Walter Raleigh at Brown 
University, Professor Winchester, in offering his toa'st, quoted 
Shakespeare's lines. 

He hates him 
That would upon the rack of this tough world 
Stretch him out longer. 

This allusion to Sir Walter's stature was the hit of the 
evening and was enjoyed by none more than by the eminent 
English scholar himself 

235 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

everyday life than does the one written by 
Mr. Adrian R. Dunn, the postman who met 
him daily for many years: 

Personally I would extend to you my tribute 
to the Christian gentleman who has passed on ; to 
him I owe the remembrance of many a happy time, 
when it would be my good fortune to meet him 
while on my route as a letter-carrier. Always 
kind; always fair; always just; always ready to 
impart needed information to one who was of an 
inquiring mind; I pray God to receive him and 
make him happy in that home where we wUl all 
expect to meet some day. 

The president of the board of trustees of 
the University at the time of Professor Win- 
chester's death was the Honorable John 
Cheesman Clark of the class of 1886. A 
double interest, therefore, attaches to the 
following tribute from him : 

Of the men who have passed their undergradu- 
ate days at Wesley an University since Professor 
Caleb Te Winchester became a member of its fac- 
ulty, there are few who fail to recognize his pro- 
found influence upon their later years. His broad 
scholarship, his rare refinement, his unfailing cour- 
tesy and consideration, his appreciation of all that 
is elevating and ennobling in literature and his 
ability to inspire in his students the same sympa- 

236 



RESOLUTIONS 

thetic understanding, made his classrooms mem- 
ories to be treasured for a lifetime. I knew and 
admired him while I was a student and I have 
known and admired him since I have been an offi- 
cer of the college. There never was in the mind 
of any man a doubt of his motives, a question of 
his honor, or a suspicion of his loyalty to truth 
and duty. He stood by his Alma Mater when 
personal considerations might have led him into 
more ambitious surroundings. He loved his work 
and he loved his college and to them he gave his 
ife in unstinted measure. 

Among my personal memories of Professor Win- 
chester is an incident in one of his class rooms. 
During my junior year in college I had a severe 
attack of pneumonia and was absent from classes 
for a number of weeks. Within a few days after 
my return to the class in English literature there 
was an oral review during the course of which I 
was called upon to illustrate some quality of 
William Cowper, whose poems had been studied 
during my absence. Rather than admit my en- 
tire lack of familiarity with the poems, I quoted 
a verse from the hymn, "God moves in a mysteri- 
ous way his wonders to perform." This amused 
several of my classmates, but Professor Winches- 
ter, realizing the situation, immediately quoted 
the remainder of the hymn, and added to it verse 
after verse of Cowper's hymns and poems, with 
sympathetic and inspiring comments during the 
rest of the hour, until he made William Cowper's 

237 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

life and poems a lasting influence upon the 
thoughts and lives of the men who were before 
him. 

It is a composite of such incidents that I have 
in mind when I look back upon the fortunate 
years of my friendship with Professor Winches- 
ter. He was to me a dear friend, an inspiring 
teacher, a rare and sympathetic spirit, and an 
ideal gentleman. 



238 



EDITORIALS 

AND OTHER 

PRESS NOTICES 



Extract from The Christian Advocate^ 
New York, June 26, 1919 

VICTORY COMMENCEMENT AT 
OLD WESLEYAN 

Wesleyan University's victory com- 
mencement, June 19-23, brought back to the 
historic campus in Middletown the largest 
gathering of alumni ever assembled in the 
history of the college. 

The central figures were Professor Caleb 
T. Winchester and Major-General Leonard 
Wood. They represented the two ideas that 
dominated the festivities. Professor Win- 
chester, honored and beloved by all Wes- 
leyan men, completes this June his fiftieth 
year as an alumnus, and in his semi-centen- 
nial celebration the whole college joined 
enthusiastically, not only because of his liter- 
ary distinction, but also because of the af- 
fection that he has won from all the alumni. 
The dinner in his honor, on Friday night, 
demonstrated that this great teacher per- 
sonifies all that is best in Wesleyan tradi- 
tions and ideals. General Wood, speaking 
241 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

at the victory rally, on Saturday afternoon, 
represented Wesley an's pride in the impor- 
tant part taken by her men in the war, the 
general rejoicing over victory, and the honor 
that the college would do to her sons return- 
ing from the service and to those who died 
in the war. For these latter a special me- 
morial service, on Sunday evening, was ad- 
dressed by Dr. George P. Eckman. 

At the commencement exercises the degree 
of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon Ma- 
jor-General Wood and Professor Winches- 
ter, and also upon Rear Admiral Leigh Car- 
lyle Palmer and Governor Marcus H. 
Holcomb, war Governor of Connecticut. 



242 



THE WESLEYAN ALUMNUS^ APEIL^ 1920 

FIFTY CLASSES MOURN WES- 
LEYAN'S LOSS: 'WINCH'— 
TEACHER, SCHOLAR, MAN. 

Few men have served Wesleyan better 
than Caleb Thomas ^vVinchester. He gave 
to the college a half century of devotion. 
But Professor Winchester had an even 
greater commission than that which he dis- 
charged in Middletown. He was a disciple 
of God and the patient teacher and sympa- 
thetic friend of all mankind. When we 
think of the achievements of Wesleyan and 
the men who have been responsible for many 
of these achievements, three names present 
themselves immediately — Van Vleck, Rice, 
and Winchester — these, who came to the old 
college as recruits, have been directly respon- 
sible for her primacy to-day. Professor 
Winchester was one of those men who 
"made" Wesleyan. 

The Olin Professor of EngKsh Literature, 
who was one of the two oldest and best- 
known members of Wesleyan' s faculty, was 
73 years old. Last December he was stricken 
243 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

with a paralytic shock from which he 
never fully recovered. For a time the at- 
tending physicians thought his condition was 
improving, but his heart failed him at the 
last. Then, in the quiet peacefulness of the 
early evening of March 24, this best-loved 
professor, whose constant affection for the 
college and loyalty to its ideals have been one 
of its greatest assets, passed silently away. 
The immediate family, including Mrs. Win- 
chester and his son, Julian Caleb Winches- 
ter, were at the bedside when the end came. 

"Winch," as he was affectionately called 
by all who knew him, was brought up in a 
strong, wholesome moral and intellectual 
environment. He was born in Uncasville, 
Connecticut, on January 18, 1847, the son 
of Rev. George F. Winchester. Both his 
father and grandfather were Methodist 
ministers. 

Throughout his years of schooling, Pro- 
fessor Winchester was a student of high 
standing. He prepared for college at Wes- 
leyan Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, 
a school which has continued to hold his af- 
fectionate interest. For eight years prior to 
his death. Professor Winchester was presi- 
244 



PRESS NOTICES 

dent of the board of trustees. He was gen- 
erous in his gifts to the Academy as well as 
in the unselfishness of his leadership. 

Graduating from Wesleyan Academy in 
1865, Professor Winchester entered Wes- 
leyan University, where his scholastic and 
hterary work was always of the highest 
type. Speaking of Professor Winchester's 
orations at evening chapel during his senior 
year. Professor Rice has said, "There was 
one man in that senior class whose orations 
had a maturity of thought and an exquisite 
beauty of language which an undergraduate 
very seldom attains. Some of the thoughts 
and some fine turns of expression impressed 
themselves upon my memory, and remain to 
this day." 

Professor Winchester was one of the ear- 
liest editors of the Wesleyan Argus and 
contributed much toward the successful 
launching of the publication. He was also 
deeply interested in all forms of music; with 
three classmates, he organized a most suc- 
cessful quartet, out of which Wesleyan's 
Glee Club later developed. He received his 
bachelor's degree with the class of 1869 with 
Phi Beta Kappa rank, and Lis master's de- 
245 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

gree in 1872. A member of Psi Upsilon, he 
remained throughout the long years one of 
the most faithful and loyal of the members 
of that fraternity. 

The first official capacity in which Profes- 
sor Winchester served Wesleyan was that 
of college librarian. He was appointed to 
this position upon graduation and served un- 
til 1873, when, at the age of 27, he was 
elected to the professorship of rhetoric and 
literature. In 1880 and 1881 he studied at 
the University of Leipsic, Germany. He 
returned to Wesleyan, and in 1890 his title 
became Olin Professor of English Litera- 
ture. 

Professor William North Rice, in an ad- 
dress dehvered at the Winchester dinner, 
June, 1919, said, "I think it is fortunate that 
Professor Winchester has served continu- 
ously in one position. Years ago he had an 
opportunity to go to a great university on a 
larger salary than he has ever received here. 
But I believe that he has achieved a greater 
and more enduring usefulness by building 
his life into the college which he has loved." 
It is true that Wesleyan has ever been Pro- 
fessor Winchester's chief center of interest* 
246 



PRESS NOTICES 

In his death the sons of Wesleyan have lost 
a true friend, for "Winch" drew men to him 
with a rare winsomeness, and always re- 
tained the friendship of those who were un- 
der his instruction. 

Besides being president of the board 
of trustees of Wilbraham Academy, Pro- 
fessor Winchester held several positions of 
distinction. In 1904 he was a member of 
the committee for the revision of the Meth- 
odist Hymnal, Between 1890 and 1900 he 
gave the Donovan lectures on English liter- 
ature in Johns Hopkins University, and he 
also lectured annually for twenty-five years 
at Wells College. Dickinson College con- 
ferred the degree of L.H.D. upon him in 
1892, and in 1919, on the fiftieth anniversary 
of his graduation from Wesleyan, his alma 
mater honored him with the degree of 
LL.D. 

Some of Professor Winchester's books on 
criticism are used in various schools and col- 
leges throughout the country. Much of his 
best literary work was never published, 
for he always wished to reserve the best 
that was in him for classroom and lectures. 
His few published works, however, are of 
247 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

the highest merit. Among them are: Five 
Short Courses of Reading in English Liter- 
ature, pubhshed in 1891 ; Some Principles of 
Literary Criticism, 1899; A Life of John 
Wesley, 1906 ; A Group of English Essay- 
ists, 1910; A Book of English Essays, 
1914; The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, 
1904; and Wordsworth: How to Know 
Him, 1916. 

Professor Winchester's first wife, Juha 
Stackpole Smith, of Middletown, whom he 
married on December 25, 1872, died Jmie 
25, 1877. On April 2, 1880, he married 
Ahce Goodwin Smith, who survives him, 
with his son, one brother, George, of Pater- 
son, N. J., and a sister. Miss Fannie Win- 
chester, of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. 

The following appreciations written by- 
alumni of four different generations give 
some insight into the affection of all Wes- 
leyan graduates for their great teacher and 
loyal friend: 

Fifty-five Years of Friendship 

I have been invited to write a few words 
in relation to Professor Winchester's early 
years in Wesleyan. 

248 




AFTER THE 1919 COMMENCEMENT 



PRESS NOTICES 

His senior year in college was the first 
year of my teaching. His hterary work in 
student days showed a maturity of thought 
and a power of expression which for an un- 
dergraduate were phenomenal. I remem- 
ber distinctly an oration on OHver Gold- 
smith, in which he showed that same power 
of bringing his hearers into acquaintance and 
friendship with the authors whom he loved 
which has characterized the lectures of his 
later years. 

Professor Winchester's first official ap- 
pointment in Wesleyan was as hbrarian. I 
think the first class which he taught was a 
class in Homer. In those days the members 
of our httle faculty did various odd jobs 
and helped where help was needed. Win- 
chester's interest in the great epic was, of 
course, on the hterary rather than on the 
linguistic side. He assisted in the work of 
the department of Enghsh before his ap- 
pointment in 1873 to the professorship which 
he has made illustrious. His introductory 
course in Enghsh literature was from the be- 
ginning the most uniformly popular elective 
in the cm-riculum. The more advanced elec- 
tives offered in the department were eagerly 
249 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

sought by the men of literary taste and 
genius. 

I remember well the first of the brilliant 
public lectures on English literature which 
gave Professor Winchester a popular rep- 
utation. It was on "London, a Hundred 
Years Ago," and was delivered in the chapel 
of the Methodist church of Middletown. On 
that occasion the lecture was illustrated by 
charcoal drawings from the hand of Mrs. 
Winchester. 

Professor Winchester was primarily and 
chiefly a writer of prose, but even in his stu- 
dent days he showed the power to write 
poetry of real merit. When Judd Hall was 
dedicated in 1871, he wrote for the occasion 
the noble hymn. 

The Lord our God alone is strong. 

That hymn is included in the two latest 
hymnals of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
In its simple dignity it reminds the reader 
of that noble hymn of Watts, 

O God, our help in ages past, 

which Winchester has characterized as the 
statehest hymn in the EngHsh language. 
250 



PRESS NOTICES 

The half -century of Professor Winches- 
ter's service in Wesleyan University was a 
half-centuiy of growing power and achieve- 
ment. But no preternatural gift of proph- 
ecy was needed to see in the Winchester of 
1869 the Winchester of 1919. 

William North Rice^ '65, 

The Beloved Teacher 

He has passed away, but he has left behind 

A store of memories, that, in the mind 

Of those who loved him, ne'er forgot shall be. 

We think of those dear, far-off days, when we 

Sat at his feet, our teacher and our friend, 

And felt the influence that ne'er shall end. 

We see his kindly face, we hear his voice. 

We feel the charm that made our hearts rejoice. 

O, in the days and years that are to be, 

More precious still shall grow his memory, 

Beloved teacher, he who turned our eyes 

Toward the beauty that around us lies. 

Long in the lives of others shall go on 

The work he did, though he himself be gone. 

— Oscar Kuhns, '85. 

In His Prime 

When I entered college Professor Win- 
chester was barely forty years of age, but he 
251 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

already possessed a national reputation as 
scholar and critic and commanded the en- 
thusiastic admiration of all his students. I 
do not think that our feelings toward him 
were very different from what they are to- 
day, as we look back over his rich and noble 
life, except that the years have given depth 
and significance to our gratitude and ap- 
preciation. 

We were impressed, first of all, by his 
learning, not as something remote and for- 
eign, but as something brought home to us 
for our use and benefit. With the greatest 
modesty, without a hint of display, he yet 
made us aware of the thoroughness, the dis- 
crimination, the ripeness, and the authority 
of his scholarship. Then, there was his mas- 
tery of the English language. That style 
so clear and fine, that diction fastidious but 
mascuhne, which we have admired in his 
books and essays, were felt in every word 
that he spoke in the classroom. He invited 
us to feast upon the best he had, and even 
we boys could appreciate the richness and 
dehcacy of the banquet. 

As a teacher and a man he was, of course, 
closer to us than as a lecturer and scholar. 
252 



PRESS NOTICES 

We felt that he belonged to us, that he was 
a very real force in our lives. He was all 
kindness and generosity and sympathy. He 
opened his hbrary to us, gave his evenings 
to reading with us, and always had a word 
of encouragement for any honest effort. 

With all his kindness and modesty he had 
the quality of dignity. He never made a 
bid for popularity; it was impossible for 
him to stoop. He had a sense of his high 
calling, of the responsibilities and duties of 
a teacher. No boy was impertinent enough 
to dream of taking a Hberty with him. His 
humor had its dignity ; it could be dry, caus- 
tic, even withering toward pretentiousness, 
but it was also sage and genial. Those quiet 
asides, which penetrated a character, or illu- 
mined a situation, or pricked a bubble — we 
watched for them eagerly, repeated and 
treasured them. How much of our subse- 
quent knowledge of literature and of men 
rests on some of those obiter dicta! 

Was it this humor which made hteratiu'e 
alive for his classes of boys? Partly, no 
doubt, but mainly I think the ideahsm which 
was so vital in his philosophy, his faith, and 
his life. Could a man better exempHfy the 
253 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

great ideal of a teacher? He crowded his 
mind with the best that has been known and 
said, he enriched it with the hterature that 
is so large a part of our spiritual treasury, 
in order that he might give freely and unre- 
servedly from his wealth to his students. 
Few men have done so much to guide young 
Americans to a love of good literature and 
of better living. 

Ashley Horace Thorndike^ '93. 

The Leader and Friend 

I am adding my small bit of halting trib- 
ute, not to Professor Winchester, the dis- 
tinguished man of letters, the great teacher, 
and the pride of Wesleyan for half a cen- 
tury — others can do that more competently 
and more gracefully than I — but to 
"Winch," as the younger generation knew 
him, the man, the beloved teacher, and the 
friend. 

It was my privilege to know him outside 
the classroom and even away from the Wes- 
leyan environment, of which he seemed so 
much a part. He was the same courteous, 
thoughtful gentleman that we all knew in 
the classroom, kindly and wise and lovable, 
254 



PRESS NOTICES 

with always a touch of rare humor lurking 
in the background. Quick in sympathy, 
keen in human judgment, wise — though 
never dogmatic — in practical counsel, he 
made friendship an honor and a rare privi- 
lege for any young man. 

In the classroom, even the dullest and 
least literary among us were stirred by a 
touch of the divine fire and inspired to emu- 
lation by the richness and inherent nobihty 
of his character, while those whose natural 
bent inchned them to books and letters will 
always look on him as the most inspiring 
teacher they ever sat under in any univer- 
sity. No less a judge than the hterary edi- 
tor of the North American Review once said 
to me that Professor Winchester had done 
more to mould the literary taste of the young 
men of this country in the past forty years 
than any other one man. The range of his 
appreciation was remarkable, from the arch 
humor of a Tam O'Shanter to the high seri- 
ousness of a Hamlet. In his own words, 
concerning Shakespeare, he "sympathized 
intimately with a wider range of passion, 
and so touched more springs of human feel- 
ing than any other." But his outstanding 
255 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

characteristic was that "moral sanity," which 
he himself says is "always characteristic of 
really great literature." 

Now he is dead, we feel not only that Wes- 
leyan is no longer Wesleyan, but that the 
spirit of living culture is less. To-day 

The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. 

It is, indeed, a dangerous loss to 
the world at this time that such a voice 
should be forever stilled. Our solace must 
lie in this, that we can never be robbed of 
the priceless thing which he has built into 
the hearts and minds of aU Wesleyan men. 
One thing alone is for us irretrievably lost, 
the man himself, whom we have loved, our 
leader and our friend. 

Philip Lombard Given^ '09. 



256 



THE WESLEYAN ALUMNUS^ APRIL^ 1920 

Editorial 
WESLEYAN'S LOSS— AND GAIN 

The heart of every alumnus is sad at the 
going of "Winch." Such a career will not 
be duplicated. No man can ever give to 
Wesleyan a gift more precious or more last- 
ing than his great gift — his life. No name is 
dearer to Wesleyan hearts than his. The 
gentle voice and manner, the genial humor, 
the rich, varied appreciation of all that is 
beautiful and good, the inspiring teaching of 
Wesleyan's great master will be a fondly 
cherished memory in the heart of every Wes- 
leyan man of the past half -century. 

Such a life is almost a miracle. It makes 
one beheve more deeply in God and in the 
infinite possibihties of humanity. Fifty- 
five years devoted to studying and teaching 
the best things that the human race has 
achieved; a life unusually rich and full, 
built, with singleness of devotion for a half- 
century, into the very fiber of a loved insti- 
tution. The privilege of such a life is 
257 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

granted to but few men. The blessing of 
such a life comes to but very few institutions. 
The grief at his going, therefore, and the dis- 
may at the gap which he has left, are tem- 
pered by joyful gratitude that he has Mved 
and that Wesleyan has had her "Winch." 



258 



THE WESLEYAN ALUMNUS, APRIL, 1920 



<< 



AROUND THE CAMPUS PAGE 

"WINCH" 

Our best beloved teacher, our perfect 
friend, the personification to us of Wes- 
leyan ideals and traditions, has left us. Of 
the present college generation, only the 
seniors and juniors came to know him per- 
sonally through the lecture room ; the under- 
classmen felt his deep humanity and the gen- 
uineness of his powerful personahty in 
chapel services and about the campus. 
Wherever he went, to whomever he spoke, 
there radiated a spirit of cheerfulness, a 
spirit of democracy, which have built them- 
selves into the very foundations of the col- 
lege. It will always be a misfortune for us 
to have lived through four years without him 
by our side, as our coimselor and our leader. 
But the inspiration of a life as simple, lov- 
ing, faithful, and devoted as his will make 
Professor Winchester live in the minds of 
us alL 



259 



WESLEYAN ARGUS^ MARCH 25, 1920 

Editorial 
PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Not one undergraduate will fail to be 
deeply stirred by the death of that seer of 
American scholars, Professor Caleb T. 
Winchester. For fifty continuous years his 
brilliant mind and kingly personality have 
helped to ennoble the characters of all 
those with whom he has dealt. Par- 
ticularly has Wesleyan been richly benefited 
through his generous endowment of thought 
and culture. In the hearts of hundreds of 
Wesleyan men who have sat at his feet and 
received the fruits of his genius, there is now 
deep sorrow that such a life of service has 
been closed. 

Fame, though much sought, comes to but 
few. Yet none can say that it did not rest 
with majesty upon the brow of him whom 
not only Wesleyan but the world of learn- 
ing mourns. The force of his intellect is 
manifested in the new vistas of learning 
which he has created ; the exquisite purity of 
260 



PRESS NOTICES 

his life remains in the new warmth which his 
friendship has brought into the hearts of all 
who knew him. Truly the world has lost 
a great scholar. Wesleyan has been bereft 
of a loyal and dear son, and every under- 
graduate, of a wise, patient counselor and 
true friend. Our sympathy goes out to 
those to whom he was dear; our grief re- 
mains a tribute to his rich life of devoted 
service. 



261 



THE NEW YORK EVENING POST^ MARCH 26, 
1920 

Editorial 

SCHOLAR AND MAN 

The death of Professor Caleb T. Win- 
chester, professor of English literature at 
Wesleyan, removes a figure of the ideal type 
for a college chair. A scholar to his finger 
tips, he infused life into learning. He pos- 
sessed the rare gift of being able to present 
his subject matter interestingly without be- 
coming superficial, resembling in this respect 
a better known scholar, the late Professor 
Lounsbury. It is impossible to demand that 
a teacher, even of one of the humanities, 
shall display this talent in so marked a way, 
but there is nothing unreasonable in the ex- 
pectation that such a teacher shall take the 
attitude toward his work that these men 
took, and strive, so far as in him lies, to do 
what they did. Literary criticism is usually 
regarded as a preserve for the specialist, and 
the specialist does little to discourage this 
notion. Yet everybody reads. Why should 
not a growing number read critically? 
262 



PRESS NOTICES 

This does not mean that they should read 
with less appreciation, less pleasure, less 
gusto. Those who came under Professor 
Winchester's influence, in classroom or pub- 
lic hall, suffered no blunting of their sensi- 
tiveness to Hterary beauty by their keener 
insight and their sharpened power of analy- 
sis. If they saw the false more clearly than 
before, they saw the true more clearly too. 
If they were less patient with the common- 
place, they had greater joy in the excellent. 

It is the fashion to refer to men hke Pro- 
fessor Winchester as scholars of the old 
school. It is the duty of college presidents 
to do what they can to make such men the 
fashion still. 



263 



THE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE^ NEW YORK^ APRIL 

1, 1920 

Extract from Editorial 
A PRINCE AMONG TEACHERS 

• •••••• 

Caleb T. Winchester was the perfect 
teacher. He loved his subject, English lit- 
erature, and had such a knowledge of its 
history, and such skill in interpreting its 
spirit, as few Americans have possessed. 
More than that, he had that rare gift of im- 
parting to others a sense of literary values, 
and a power to analyze and appreciate lit- 
erature, which fitted most of his students to 
read to their own edification, while it in- 
spired a few in every college generation to 
brilliant creative effort. 

In his modest and charming way, before 
a company of his best friends at the last 
commencement season, Professor Winches- 
ter told, with engaging informality, the story 
of his connection with this college to whose 
service he devoted his life. The paper' will 

^Printed on pages 96 to 117 of this volume. It was also 
printed in the above-mentioned number of The Christian 
Advocate with the following introductory note: 

264 



PRESS NOTICES 

be read with delight by his old pupils, for it 
is fragrant with his cherished personality. 
But its value goes beyond its reminiscence. 
Informal though it is, it is a contribution to 
the history of the study of Enghsh literature 
in American colleges. For in this field Wes- 
leyan was an acknowledged leader, and it 
was so because in this man she had a teacher 
who had raised his subject to a commanding 
position as a means of general culture. The 
rich universities recognized his worth, and 
sometimes drew upon his services, but he 
was deaf to their flattering invitations to 
join their teaching staff. 



"Dr. Winchester, who has had no superior in his genera- 
tion in America as a teacher of English literature in the col- 
lege classroom and in the popular lecture hall, was the guest 
of many friends, colleagues, and former students last com- 
mencement. His remarks on that occasion are addressed 
first of all to the graduates of that fine New England college, 
most of whom had been his pupils; but his acquaintance is so 
wide, his academic standing so eminent, that his remarks upon 
college education in general and the study of literature in par- 
ticular will be of interest to all who are concerned in this form 
of intellectual culture." 



265 



THE REVIEW, NEW YORK, MAY 1, 1920 

CORRESPONDENCE 

To THE Editors of the Review : 

It is with regret that I note that none of 
the literary weekhes has so far mentioned 
the recent death of Professor C. T. Win- 
chester, for nearly fifty years head of the 
department of English literature at Wes- 
leyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. 
I say with regret because he was one of the 
small band of truly literary teachers of lit- 
erature. To sit in his classroom was at once 
an education and an inspiration. His voice 
was like one of those voices at Oxford of 
whom Arnold wrote so eloquently in his 
essay on Emerson. In our American univer- 
sities, in our departments of English htera- 
ture, we now have, if you will, "more knowl- 
edge, more light," but such a voice as that 
of Winchester is most rare. In very few 
cases is the great author tried by his peer. 
Shakespeare becomes a curiosity of Eliza- 
bethan English, and we learn everything 
about Chaucer except his literary qualities. 
266 



PRESS NOTICES 

Professor Winchester was a peer of literary 
greatness. To read his books, Principles of 
Literary Criticism and A Group of English 
Essayists of the Early Nineteenth Century, 
is to be acutely conscious of this. His ex- 
quisite literary taste and judgment, his rare 
faculty of imparting hterary enthusiasms — 
which never included mediocre authors — 
drew to him a band of disciples limited only 
by the number of students in attendance at 
Wesley an. Several times he refused flatter- 
ing offers from great universities. His work, 
he said, was at Wesleyan. 

The loss of such a teacher of literature is 
a calamity ; but in the shadow of those moun- 
tains which he loved, beyond the Connecticut 
river below Middletown, his memory will 
need no laurel. 

Harry Torsey Baker.^ 
Goucher College, 

Baltimore, Md., April 23. 

1 Professor Baker was graduated from Wesleyan in 1900 and 
during the next three years served there as assistant in Eng- 
lish, and in 1903-1904 as tutor in English. 



267 



A 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

OF THE 

PUBLISHED WRITINGS 

OF 

PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 



A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE PUB- 
LISHED WRITINGS OF PRO- 
FESSOR WINCHESTER 

(Joint editor), [Wesleyan] College 
Argus, v. 2, 1868-1869. 

Somnia [Taylor Prize Poem]. [Wes- 
leyan] College Argus, v. 2, p. 1, September 
24, 1868. 

To-night [poem]. [Wesleyan] College 
Argus, v. 2, p. 9, October 15, 1868. 

Hawthorne and Thackeray [Sophomore 
Exhibition Oration]. [Wesleyan] College 
Argus, v. 2, pp. 41-42, February 4, 1869. 

One Day [poem]. [Wesleyan] College 
Argus, v. 2, p. 61, March 18, 1869. 

Class Song, '69 (Air— "Solo Profugo"— 
Martha). [Wesleyan] College Argus, v. 
2, p. 89, July 1, 1869; This song beginning 
"Like a dream that passeth fleetly" is re- 
printed with the title. Farewell Song, in The 
Wesleyan Song Book, Middletown, Conn., 
Wesleyan University Musical Association, 
1901, p. 104; second edition, 1903, p. 106; 
third edition, 1906, p. 109; fourth edition, 
1914, p. 131. 

271 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

(Editor) Ceremonies and Speeches at the 
Laying of the Corner Stone and Dedication 
of the Orange Judd Hall of Natural Sci- 
ence, Wesleyan University, Middletown, 
Connecticut, May 5, 1870, and July 18, 
1871. Pp. 68. 

Hymn: "The Lord Our God Alone is 
Strong." Ceremonies and Speeches at the 
Laying of the Corner Stone and Dedication 
of the Orange Judd Hall of Natural Set- 
ence, p. 36 ; Hymnal of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, 1878, p. 322 (Hymn No. 
866) ; The Methodist Hymnal, 1905, p. 491 
(Hymn No. 686) ; The Wesleyan Song 
Book, Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan Uni- 
versity Musical Association, 1901, p. 94; 
second edition, 1903, p. 94; third edition, 
1906, p. 94; fourth edition, 1914, p. 129. 

(Associate Editor) Alumni Record of 
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. 
( Second Edition) . Boston : Press of Rand, 
Avery & Company, 1873. Pp. xxviii+308. 

(Editor) Addresses at the Inauguration 
of Rev. Cyrus D. Foss, D.D., as President 
of Wesleyan University, Tuesday, October 
26, 1875. Middletown, Conn.: Pelton & 
King, 1876. Pp. 35. 

272 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Wesleyan University. The College Booh, 
edited by F. Richardson and Henry A. 
Clark. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Com- 
pany, 1878. Pp. 301-319. 

Some Characteristics of English Thought 
in the Eighteenth Century. Methodist 
Quarterly Review, v. 63, pp. 246-270, 
April, 1881. 

Historical Sketch of Wesleyan Univer- 
sity. Alumni Record of Wesleyan Univer- 
sity, Middletown, Conn, Third edition, 
1881-3, pp. xiii-xviii. Fourth edition, 1911, 
pp. viii-xv. 

(Editor) Selected Essays of Joseph Ad- 
dison, with an Introduction. New York: 
Rand, Avery & Company, 1886. New 
York: Chautauqua Press, 1890. Pp. 175. 
(In Chautauqua Library, Garnet Series.) 

A Plea for the Study of Literature. 
Methodist Review, v. 68, pp. 668-682, Sep- 
tember-October, 1886. 

(Joint editor). The Wesleyan Univer- 
sity Bulletin, Numbers 1 to 67, January, 
1888, to December, 1919. 

Byron, Methodist Review, v. 70, pp. 666- 
686, September-October, 1888. 

Literature as an Agent of Christian Cul- 
273 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

ture, Zion's Herald, April 2, 1890. 

Some Recent Biography, Zionfs Herald, 
April 29, 1891. 

Five Short Courses of Reading in Eng- 
lish Literature, with Biographical and 
Critical References. Boston: Ginn & Co., 
1891. Pp. v+99. Revised edition, 1900, pp. 
vi+129. Third revised edition, 1911, pp. 
v+150. 

A Pledge to Psi Upsilon (Air, Freedom's 
Flag) ; and Here's to Old Psi U! (Air, 
Freiheit, die ich meine). Songs of the Psi 
Upsilon Fraternity, New York. Executive 
Council of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity, tenth 
edition, 1891, pp. 20-21 and 65; eleventh 
edition, 1908, pp. 20-21 and 65. 

Review of TYhite's Philosophy of Amer- 
ican Literature. Educational Review,, v. 2, 
pp. 186-189, July, 1891. 

Review of Mrs. Sutherland Orr's Life of 
Browning. Zionfs Herald, August 26, 
1891. 

James Russell Lowell as Man of Letters. 
Review of Reviews, v. 4, pp. 291-294, Sep- 
tember, 1891. 

The Bible as Literature. Zion's Herald, 
October 12, 1892. 

274 



1 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

(Joint editor with Professor George Ly- 
man Kittredge, of Harvard University) 
The Athenaeum Press Series. Boston: Ginn 
& Co., 1892-1902, 27 vols. 

Introduction. Wesleyan Verse, Selected 
from the Undergraduate Publications of 
Wesleyan University, edited by Frederic 
Laurence Knowles, '94. Middletown, 
Conn., 1894, pp. 9-10. Second edition, 1914, 
pp. ix-xii. 

Narrow Methodism or Broad? Zion's 
Herald, May 4, 1898. 

Some Principles of Literary Criticism. 
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899. 
Pp. xii+352. Also a translation into Jap- 
anese. 

John Buskin. Methodist Review, v. 82, 
pp. 210-231, March-April, 1900. 

The Golden Age of New England Liter- 
ature. Methodist Review, v. 83, pp. 456- 
464, May-June, 1901. 

The Beal Burns. Boohlovers' Magazine, 
March, 1903. 

John Wesley. Century Magazine, v. QQ, 
pp. 389-408; 492-510, July and August, 
1903. 

John Wesley, the Man. 17 08-1903, Wes- 
275 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

ley Bicentennial, Wesleyan University, 
Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University, 
1904, pp. 97-123. 

(Editor) The Sir Roger de Coverley 
Papers. New York: American Book Com- 
pany, 1904. Pp. 258. (In the Gateway 
Series.) 

Literature as a Means of Religious Edu- 
cation in the Home. The Religious Educa- 
tion Association, Proceedings of the Second 
Annual Convention^, Philadelphia, March 
2-A, 1904, Chicago: Executive Office of the 
Association, 1904, pp. 38-45. 

Review of Dr. J. Albert Swallow's Meth- 
odism in the Light of the Enghsh Literature 
of the Last Century. Journal of English 
and Germanic Philology, v. 5, pp. 372-374, 
July, 1904. 

(Member of Joint Commission of Edi- 
tors), The Methodist Hymnal, Official 
Hymnal of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church and the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South. New York: Eaton and 
Mains, 1905. Pp. viii+554+97. 

Tune: Middletown, The Methodist Hym- 
nal, 1905, p. 314. [Setting for Alford's 
"My bark is wafted to the strand."] 
276 



J 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The New Methodist Hymnal — the 
Hymns. Methodist Review, v. 87, pp. 681- 
696, September-October, 1905. 

An Appreciation of Frederic Laurence 
Knowles. A paper read before the Wes- 
ley an Young Alumni Club of Boston, Oc- 
tober 27, 1905. Privately printed by Wes- 
leyan Young Alumni Club of Boston, 
January, 1906. Pp. 23. 

The Life of John Wesley. New York: 
The Macmillan Company, 1906. Pp. 
xiii+301. 

Arthur Hugh Clough. Methodist Be- 
view, V. 88, pp. 716-732, September-Octo- 
ber, 1906. 

Football Song. The Wesleyan Song 
Book, Anniversary [third] edition. Mid- 
dletown. Conn., Wesleyan University Musi- 
cal Association, 1906, p. 107; Foiu:th edi- 
tion, 1914, p. 130. 

Speech as Toastmaster, Commencement 
Luncheon, June 26, 1906. 1831-1906, Cel- 
ebration of the Seventy- fifth Anniversary of 
the Founding of Wesleyan University, Mid- 
dletown. Conn., Wesleyan University, 1907, 
pp. 55-59. 

What the Pew Needs from the Pulpit. 
277 



PKOFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Homiletic Review, v. 53, pp. 88-91, 168-172, 
February, March, 1907. 

John Wilson. Methodist Review, v. 90, 
pp. 186-201, March-April, 1908. 

Speech as Toastmaster at the Dinner to 
Delegates, Invited Guests, Trustees, and 
Faculty of the University, The Installation 
of William Arnold Shanklin, L.H.D., 
LL.D,, as Ninth President of Wesleyan 
Univei'sity, Middletown, Conn., November 
12, 1909, pp. 87-89. 

A Group of English Essayists of the 
Early Nineteenth Century. New York: 
The Macmillan Company, 1910. Pp. ix+ 
250. 

John Wesley in the New Edition of the 
Journal. Methodist Review, v. 93, pp. 205- 
218, March-April, 1911. 

The Bible as Literature. Methodist Re- 
view, V. 93, pp. 285-298, March-April, 
1911. 

Address at Dinner of the Wesleyan Uni- 
versity Club of New York, New York City, 
January 10, 1913. Methodist Review, v. 95, 
pp. 277-284, March-April, 1913. Reprinted 
in pamphlet: Wesleyan University New 
York Alumni Association, Annual Banquet, 
278 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

January 10, 1913, Address of Caleb T. 
Winchester, Olin Professor of English Lit- 
erature in Wesleyan University, pp. 3-10. 

The Poetry of Robert Browning. Meth- 
odist Review, v. 94, pp. 674-692, September- 
October, 1912. 

(Editor) A Book of EngKsh Essays. 
New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1914, 
pp. xiv+405. (In English Readings for 
Schools, edited by W. L. Cross. ) 

Professor Rice as a Member of the Fac- 
ulty, Tributes to Professor William North 
Rice, Annual Dinner, New York Wesleyan 
University Club, January 29, 1915, [Mid- 
dletown] : Wesleyan Almnni Comicil, 
[1915], pp. 18-27. 

WilKam Wordsworth: How to Know 
Him. IndianapoHs: The Bobbs-Merrill 
Company, 1916. Pp. 289. 

[President Raymond as Neighbor and 
Friend.] Address [at the Memorial Serv- 
ice]. Bradford Paul Raymond, 1846-1916, 
Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University, 
1916, pp. 18-20. 

Wesleyan's Third [Fourth] President 
[Augustus Wilham Smith]. Address at 
Unveihng of Memorial Window, Wesleyan 
279 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Alumnus, v. 3, No. 1, pp. 12-14, October, 
1918. 

A New England Mystic, Methodist Re- 
view, V. 102, pp. 517-553, July, 1919. 

The New Poetry, Methodist Review, v. 
103, pp. 9-21, January, 1920. 

Prayers, Numbers 116 and 157. The 
Chapel Service Booh for Schools and Col- 
leges, New York. Abingdon Press, 1920. 



280 



I 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

ASA 

PUBLIC LECTURER 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER AS A 
PUBLIC LECTURER 

One of the most notable factors in Pro- 
fessor Winchester's career was his success 
and popularity as a pubhc lecturer on ht- 
erary and other topics. One of his earliest 
appearances as a public lecturer was before 
a Middletown audience, and his subject was 
London a Hundred Years Ago, This lec- 
ture, repeated from time to time before vari- 
ous audiences, was last given before a Cal- 
ifornia audience in 1917 at what was 
probably one of his last appearances as a 
lecturer before a general audience. 

In the space of more than forty years 
which lay between these two lectures Pro- 
fessor Winchester gave a large number of 
lectures and courses of lectures before both 
college and general audiences. Of unusual 
interest and importance was his connection 
with Wells College at Aurora-on-Cayuga- 
Lake, New York, of which Miss Katherine 
Keeler, Professor of Enghsh in that college, 
has written as follows: 

He lectured at the college for thirty years, 
283 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

from 1880 to 1910 (through 1909) without, I 
think, ever missing a year. He came two or three 
times after that, but no longer regularly. He 
came always, so far as I know, at Thanksgiving 
time, spending the last week of November with 
us. He usually gave five or six lectures during 
that week, though in some of the earlier years as 
few as three or fou^. 

The lectures at first were more general in char- 
acter than later. The first that I find mentioned 
in the catalogue (1883-1884) were three lectures 
on English Literature in the Times of Elizabeth 
and Queen Anne. He gave the next year a series 
of five on Literature of the Elizabethan Period. 
He gave several times a number of lectures, four 
or five or six, on Shakespeare's Plays ; five on the 
Age of Queen Anne; five on a Group of English 
Essayists (Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey, etc.); 
Memories of the English Lake Region ; a series on 
Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats; 
a series on the Victorian Writers (Carlyle, Ten- 
nyson, Browning, Arnold, Clough) ; one group 
of lectures on American Literature (American 
Literature before 1830, Emerson, Lowell, Long- 
fellow, and Whittier ) ; and single lectures on An 
Old Castle, An Evening in the London of 1780, 
Literature as a Means of Religious Culture. 

Professor Winchester gave many informal 
talks and readings during the days he spent in 
Aurora. He was always exceedingly generous to 
us. He came to know well many of the students, 

284 



J 



LECTURER 

and many of them look back to his days at the 
college as a time that gave them their first real 
love for literature, or that strengthened the de- 
light they had found in it under the guidance of 
Dean Smith. ^ 

Dr. Kerr D. Macmillan, now President of 
Wells College, has written as follows of the 
esteem in which Professor Winchester has 
continued to be held at Wells College and of 
the memorials for him estabhshed there: 

One of our trustees, Mrs. Charles Weston of 
Scranton, who was an undergraduate here when 
Professor Winchester used to visit the college, 
has just endowed a scholarship which is to be 
called the Winchester scholarship in his honor. 

I think, too, I should tell you, in case it may 
not have reached your ears, that the senior mem- 
ber of the department of English, Miss Keeler, 
has put a bronze memorial tablet^ in our Library 
commemorating his connection with the college, 
and also given an endowment to buy books year 
after year in his name. 

* Helen Fairchild Smith, daughter of Augustus William 
Smith, fourth President of Wesleyan University, through 
whom the invitation to lecture at Wells College was originally 
extended to Professor Winchester. 

* The inscription reads: 

IN MEMOBT OP 

CALEB T. WINCHESTER 

LECTURES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 

1880-1909 

IN LITERATURE HE FOUND LIFE 

285 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

It was not my good fortune to be here when 
Professor Winchester regularly lectured to the 
students, and I have heard him only occasionally, 
but it is obvious that his influence upon those who 
had the advantage of hearing him was both good 
and permanent, and that they all hold his memory 
in very high esteem. What a fine thing it is to 
know that the good we do may live after us in the 
hearts and lives of our friends ! 

It has been both a pleasure and an inspiration 
to hear the many good things said of Professor 
Winchester's life and work in Wells College, and 
to have the college chosen as a trustee of concrete 
memorials to him. 

Of almost equal interest was Professor 
Winchester's connection, as a lecturer, with 
Johns Hopkins University^ where he four 
times gave the lectures on the Donovan 
Foundation as follows: 

1890-1891. English Literature of the Period of 

Queen Anne, eight lectures. 

The Lake Poets, one lecture. 
1891-1892. English Poets of the First Half of 

the Nineteenth Century, nine lectures. 
1894-1895. Literature of the Victorian Period, 

ten lectures. 
1899-1900. Essayists and Reviewers of the Early 

Nineteenth Century, six lectures. 

iSee above, pages 166-168. 

286 



LECTURER 

In furnishing the information concerning 
the dates and sub j ects of these lectures, Pro- 
fessor John H. Latane, the Dean of that 
University, has written: 

I find four courses listed, the first three of which 
I remember very distinctly attending myself. 
Professor Winchester's lectures always attracted 
large crowds, including members of the faculty, 
graduate students, and the general public. He 
was one of the most popular lecturers we have 
ever had, and I have very vivid recollections of 
him and his delightful humor. 

At one time or another he gave one or 
more courses of lectures before each of 
the following colleges and universities: 
Yale University, Brown University, 
Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, 
Elmira College, Richmond College, Ohio 
Wesleyan University, Northwestern Univer- 
sity and the University of Wisconsin. He, 
also, gave single lectures on one or more oc- 
casions at Dartmouth College, Williams 
College, Amherst College, Vassar College, 
Clark College, Rhode Island State College, 
Princeton University, University of Michi- 
gan, Purdue University, Clemson College, 
Wofford College, Hartford Theological 
287 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Seminary, Auburn Theological Seminary, 
and Drew Theological Seminary. 

He was a frequent lecturer before teach- 
ers' associations, university extension or- 
ganizations. Conferences of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, literary societies, and 
other gatherings within a day's journey of 
Middletown. His engagements at more dis- 
tant points included Philadelphia, Pennsyl- 
vania; Norfolk, Virginia; Charleston, South 
Carolina; Mobile, Alabama; Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; Indianap- 
olis, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; and Pasa- 
dena and Los Angeles, California. 

The high appreciation of Professor Win- 
chester as a lecturer was manifested by the 
repeated invitations to return for additional 
courses or lectures, in many different years, 
at a large proportion of the places where he 
had once appeared. It is quite impossible to 
furnish a complete list of the lectures given 
or of the places or dates involved, but the 
following items are, perhaps, the more im- 
portant ones. 

A course of six lectures on Sia^ Plays of 
Shakespeare, South Manchester, Connecti- 
cut, college year 1894-1895; University Ex- 
288 



LECTURER 

tension Society, New Haven, January 20- 
February 24, 1898. Three of these lectures 
were given at Hotel Waldorf-Astoria, New 
York, January 31, February 14, March 6, 
1908. A lecture on The Winter's Tale, the 
Play of Shakespeare's Home-Coming, was 
given before the Quill Club, New York, 
April 18, 1916. 

Lectures on Shakespeare, the Man were 
given at Memorial Chapel, Wesleyan Uni- 
versity, February 7, 1893; Shakespeare Me- 
morial Service, Madison Avenue Methodist 
Episcopal Church, New York, April 23, 
1916; Century Club, Springfield, Massa- 
chusetts, November 8, 1916. 

A course of eight lectures on the Idtera- 
ture of the Period of Queen Anne, Johns 
Hopkins University, college year 1890- 
1891; University Extension Society, Hart- 
ford, Connecticut, college year 1894-1895. 
Given as a course of six lectures. West Phil- 
adelphia Branch of the Society for the Ex- 
tension of University Studies, college year 
1891-1892; Brooklyn Institute, college year 
1899-1900; Ohio Wesleyan University, Feb- 
ruary 11-16, 1903; Hartford, Connecticut, 
February 29-April 4, 1908. 
289 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

A course of nine lectures on the Principal 
English Poets of the Period 1789-1832: 1. 
Introductory, Characteristics of the Period; 
2. Burns; 3. Wordsworth; 4. Southey and 
Coleridge; 5. Scott; 6. Byron; 7. Shelley, 
the Man; 8. Shelley, the Poet; 9. Keats, 
Memorial Chapel, Wesleyan University, 
October 30, 1894-March 23, 1895. This 
course was probably first given as a course 
of six lectures, Unity Hall, Hartford, Con- 
necticut, Spring, 1887, and was so repeated 
at Wells College, November, 1887; at 
Northwestern University, college year 1890- 
91 ; and before the Brooklyn Institute, Oc- 
tober 9-November 7, 1897; the full course 
of nine lectiu^es was given at Johns Hopkins 
University in the college year 1891-1892; 
as an abbreviated course of four lectures it 
was given at Brown University, college year 
1896-1897, and at the University of Wiscon- 
sin, February 10-14, 1902. 

A course of six lectures on the Essayists 
and Reviewers of the Early Nineteenth Cen- 
tury: 1. Introductory; 2. Hazlitt; 3. Lamb; 
4. De Quincey; 5. Wilson; 6. Leigh Hunt, 
Donovan Foundation, Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, college year 1899-1900; Brooklyn 
290 



LECTURER 

Institute, September 28-November 9, 1900; 
Yale University, December 3-17, 1900; 
Hartford, Connecticut, November 3-De- 
cember 12, 1900. 

A course of ten lectures on the Literature 
of the Victorian Period, Donovan Founda- 
tion, Johns Hopkins University, college 
year 1894-1895; Thomas Foundation, Rich- 
mond College, Richmond, Virginia, college 
year 1894-1895. A course of four of these 
lectures on the poets was given at Brown 
University, college year 1891-92 ; a course of 
six lectures was given at Northwestern Uni- 
versity, college year 1890-1891; before the 
Brooklyn Institute, college year 1896-1897; 
and the University Extension Society, New 
Haven, October-November, 1898; two lec- 
tures on Clough and Arnold were given at 
Auburn Theological Seminary, college year 
1896-1897; one on Arnold, at Princeton 
University, college year 1899-1900; and one 
on Ruskin, at Amherst College, college year 
1899-1900. 

The Bible as Literature, Massachusetts 

Division of Epworth League, Worcester, 

Mass., October 7, 1892; Wesleyan Guild, 

University of Michigan, December 1, 1897. 

291 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

The Advantage of Literary Study to the 
Minister, New York East Conference, 
April 9, 1894. 

Broader Conceptions of a Religious Life, 
Epworth League Convention, Scranton, 
April 15, 1894. 

The Educational Value of the Study of 
English Literature. Rhode Island State 
Teachers' Association, Providence, October, 
1898. 

The Teaching of John Rushin, New 
York East Conference, April 10, 1899. 

The Disappearance of Literature, Nine- 
teenth Century Club, New York, Novem- 
ber 20, 1900. 

Modern Hymnology, Methodist Social 
Union of Boston, November 18, 1901. 

Literature as a Means of Christian Cul- 
ture, Wesleyan Guild, University of Mich- 
igan, February 8, 1903. 

The Methodist Hymnal, Brooklyn Meth- 
odist Social Union, October 10, 1905. 

What the Pew Expects of the Pulpit. 
College Conference, Hartford Theological 
Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut, March 
30, 1906. 

Professor Atwater as a Friend, MemO" 
292 



LECTURER 

rial Address J Wesley an University, October 
6, 1907. 

Art, Love, and Religion in the Poetry of 
Browning, Mid-year Meeting of the New 
York East Conference of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, Mount Vernon, New 
York, October 15, 1907. 

Whittier as a Poet, Congregational Club, 
New York, December 16, 1907; Middlesex 
County Historical Society, Middletown, 
December 17, 1907 (centenary of Whit- 
tier's birth). 

Milton's Place in Literature, Memorial 
Chapel, Wesleyan University, December 9, 
1908 (ter-centenary of Milton's birth). 

Robert Burns, Address delivered on the 
anniversary of the poet's birthday. Teach- 
ers' Association, Passaic, New Jersey, Jan- 
uary 25, 1911. 

The Religious Teaching of Robert 
Browning, Wesleyan Guild, University of 
Michigan, April 23, 1911. 

The Philosophy of Browning, New York 
Browning Society, Waldorf-Astoria, New 
York, May 8, 1912; Commencement Ad- 
dress, De Pauw University, June 13, 1912. 

Browning in the Twentieth Century. 
293 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Methodist Social Union, Boston, Massa- 
chusetts, May 20, 1912. 

Some Present Aspects of American Lit- 
erature, The Get-Together Club, Hart- 
ford, December 21, 1914; The Arts Soci- 
ety, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New 
Hampshire, April 24, 1915; Commencement 
Address, Wells College, June 6, 1916. 

The Spiritual Significance of Words- 
worth, First Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Middletown, March 9, 1915. 

The Spiritual Significance of Browning, 
First Methodist Episcopal Church, Middle- 
town, March 23, 1915. 

The Oral Interpretation of Literature, 
New York English Teachers' Association, 
New York, February 19, 1916. 

The Literary Character and Value of the 
Book of Job, First Methodist Episcopal 
Church, Middletown, March 21, 1916. 



The Wesleyan University Bulletin for 
May, 1895, contains the following state- 
ment: "Fourteen members of the faculty, 
whose interests lie in the departments of lit- 
erature and language, history, philosophy, 
and sociology, have formed a dub for the 
294 



LECTURER 

discussion of topics of interest to the mem- 
bers, as well as for social purposes. The 
club meets once a month, at the residence of 
one of the members." Professor Winches- 
ter, who was the first president of the club, 
which soon took the name of The Apostles' 
Club, was ever "the chief of the Apostles." 
His regular papers presented before the 
club were on the following topics : 

College year 1895-1896: The Essential 
Element of Literature. 

March, 1898 : Poetical Form. 

May, 1900: The Early Reviewers. 

February, 1901: The Disappearance of 
Literature. 

December, 1902 : John Wesley's Taste in 
Love and Letters. 

November, 1904: The Making of a 
Hymnal. 

February 7, 1907: The Teaching of Eng- 
lish Literature in College Classes. 

October 8, 1908: The Early English Re- 
views. 

April 18, 1913: Some Remarks on Em- 
erson. 

November 17, 1916: The Teaching of 
English Literature in Colleges. 
295 



1 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

April 12, 1918: Poetry To-day and To- 
morrow. 



In September, 1869, Professor Winches- 
ter was elected a member of the Conversa- 
tional Club of Middletown, an organization 
of about twenty-five members chosen from 
members of the Wesleyan faculty and cit- 
izens of Middletown, which had been organ- 
ized in 1862. He was rarely absent from 
the fortnightly gatherings of this club and 
his participation in the discussions constantly 
displayed his wide range of information and 
interest and his broad sympathies. The 
papers which he himself presented before 
the club reveal perhaps better than anything 
else the subjects which interested him dur- 
ing the period of his half -century of mem- 
bership. A list of these topics, with the 
dates, follows: 

Jan. 31, 1870, The Bible in the Conmion 
School. 

March 4, 1872, Popular Education in 
England. 

April 7, 1873, Creeds. 

Oct. 12, 1874, Utihtarianism in Educa- 
tion. 

296 



LECTURER 

Dec. 13, 1875, Relations of Science and 
Literature. 

April 30, 1877, Recent Study of Shake- 
speare. 

Feb. 10, 1879, English Thought in the 
Eighteenth Century. 

Dec. 1, 1879, Recent Studies in Chaucer. 

Dec. 5, 1881, Some Days in England. 

April 23, 1883, The Madness of Hamlet. 

April 28, 1884, Early English Drama. 

March 23, 1885, George Eliot. 

May 24, 1886, The Science of Happiness. 

Jan. 16, 1888, Shakespeare-Bacon. 

Dec. 16, 1889, Thomas Carlyle. 

Dec. 7, 1891, University Extension. 

March 13, 1893, Ruskin. 

Dec. 31, 1894, Remarks on the Modern 
Novel. 

Dec. 21, 1896, A Month Awheel in Eng- 
land. 

May 31, 1898, Some Characteristics of 
the Literature of the Victorian Period. 

Feb. 25, 1901, Questions of International 
Ethics. 

April 7, 1902, Leigh Hunt. 

Feb. 22, 1904, The Making of a Hymn 
Book. 

297 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

May 1, 1905, Christopher North. 

Jan. 14, 1907, Some Random Remarks on 
Emerson. 

Oct. 19, 1908, A Day in Ravenna. 

April 25, 1910, New Light on John 
Wesley. 

Feb. 26, 1912, Some Remarks about 
Charles Dickens. 

Oct. 20, 1913, The New Poet Lam-eate— 
and Remarks. 

March 1, 1915, Some Present Aspects of 
American Literatm*e. 

Feb. 5, 1917, Some Newest New Poetry. 

Oct. 21, 1918, A New England Mystic. 



298 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER'S 

COURSES 

IN 

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER'S 

COURSES 

IN 

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 

In the days when Professor Winchester 
was a student in college, the program of 
instruction included very httle reference to 
instruction in English outside the rhe- 
torical exercises which in one form or 
another were required each of the four 
years. In the first term of the sopho- 
more year, logic was required, with Whate- 
ly's book as text. This was followed in 
the second term by rhetoric, also based on 
Whately's text, and in the third term by 
Enghsh hterature, based on Shaw's Manual. 
The first development beyond this meager 
schedule appears in the catalogue for 1869- 
1870, the year following Professor Win- 
chester's graduation, when there was added 
instruction in the junior year providing for 
the "rhetorical study" of the writings of cer- 
tain authors. The author selected for the 
first term was Chaucer. In the second term 
301 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

attention was given to Demosthenes, Web- 
ster, and Jeremy Taylor, and in the third 
term to Shakespeare and Milton. The credit 
for this change undoubtedly belonged to 
Professor Tales Henry Newhall, who was 
Prof essor Winchester's predecessor. Further 
evidence of progress appeared in the replac- 
ing of Shaw's Manual by Fiske's abridg- 
ment of Taine in 1872-1873. 

Professor Winchester's election to the 
chair of rhetoric and English hterature coin- 
cided with a thoroughgoing revision of the 
whole curriculum. Thus, in the very first 
year of his professorship. Professor Win- 
chester was able to introduce a new program 
of instruction for his department which con- 
tained marked advances over that of his 
predecessor. It provided, for the freshman 
year, a required course, one hour a week, 
based upon Trench's English, Past and 
Present, supplemented by lectures. There 
were also weekly exercises in composition 
and declamation. For the sophomore year 
rhetoric and logic were required five hours 
each fortnight, with Bain's Manual of Com- 
position and Rhetoric and Atwater's Manual 
of Logic for texts. Weekly exercises in 
302 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

composition and declamation were also re- 
quired. In junior year, in addition to the 
required weekly exercises in composition and 
declamation, there was an elective course 
five hours a fortnight in rhetoric and Eng- 
lish literature, for which the text-books listed 
were Whately's Rhetoric and Taine's Eng- 
lish Literature (Fiske's abridgment). The 
course also provided for "historical and crit- 
ical study of English classics based upon the 
Clarendon Press editions of Chaucer, 
Spenser, Shakespeare, and Pope; together 
with Abbott's Shakespearean Grammar." 
For the senior year the required rhetorical 
exercises demanded either essays or original 
declamations. The above requirements were 
for the classical course. The same studies 
were required in the Latin-scientific course 
and in the scientific course, but, in some 
cases, were assigned to different years. In 
1881-1882 the following significant state- 
ment was incorporated in the announcement 
for the junior elective: "select courses of 
reading with examinations," though these 
courses of reading had been in use at least 
as early as 1879-1880. In the same year 
a senior elective course was announced for 
303 



PROFESSOR WIlSrCHESTER 

the first time, which dealt with the period of 
Queen Anne. 

Until 1885 Professor Winchester dis- 
charged the duties of librarian in addition to 
the work of his department. While there 
was an assistant hbrarian from 1877-1878 
onward, it was not until 1884-1885 that the 
catalogue shows the appointment of an as- 
sistant in rhetoric, William Edward Mead. 
With the retirement of Professor Winches- 
ter from the librarianship, this assistantship 
disappeared, and until the return of Mr. 
Mead in 1890-1891 to divide the work of the 
department with Professor Winchester, the 
only aid he had in carrying the burden of 
departmental work was received from the 
successive instructors or tutors in Greek and 
Latin: Alfred Charles True, 1885-1886; 
Franklin Henry Taylor, 1886-1890; Robert 
Henry Wilhams, 1886-1889; and Karl 
Pomeroy Harrington, 1889-1890. 

The introductory course, long known as 
I. English Literature, or more popularly 
as "One Lit," was a junior elective until 
1898-1899, after which date it was a sopho- 
more elective. From 1912-1913 onward the 
course met three times a week and its con- 
304 



1 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

duct was shared with Associate Professor 
Louis Bliss Gillet, who had sole charge in 
the year 1916-1917; in 1917-1918 Profes- 
sor Winchester shared the course with In- 
structor John Edward Jacoby ; in 1918-1919 
Professor Frank Edgar Farley took over 
the course. 

From 1881-1882 to 1900-1901, there was 
one senior elective in the department; at 
first this was on the literature of the period 
of Queen Anne; in 1883-1884 followed the 
introduction of the study of the period from 
1789 to 1832; and in 1888-1889 the litera- 
ture of the Victorian period, 1830-1880, was 
first offered instead. Beginning in 1901- 
1902 the last two courses became junior 
electives and to them was added in 1905- 
1906 a course on six plays of Shakespeare: 
the course given in any one year being 
chosen from the three. In 1900-1901 the 
senior seminary, as the senior elective was 
usually called, again dealt with the litera- 
ture of the period of Queen Anne; in the 
following year it was on the essayists and 
reviewers of the early nineteenth century; 
and in 1904-1905 the New England litera- 
ture, 1835-1885, was offered for the first 
305 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

time: the course offered in any one year 
being chosen from the three. In 1916-1917, 
when Professor Winchester was in residence 
only during the first semester, the subject 
of the senior seminary was the poetry of 
Browning and Tennyson, and this was ex- 
tended in 1917-1918 to a year course on the 
literature of the Victorian period. 

The course on the elements of literary 
criticism was first offered in 1891-1892 and 
was repeated every year thereafter except 
two. 

From 1897-1898 to 1909-1910 Professor 
Winchester gave a course in debate, which 
was followed from 1910-1911 to 1915-1916by 
an elective course in public speaking for se- 
niors, which was conducted jointly with In- 
structor John Wesley Wetzel. From 1873- 
1874 to 1889-1890 inclusive. Professor Win- 
chester had charge of the rhetorical exercises 
required of all four classes, and from 1890- 
1891 to 1909-1910 the required rhetorical 
work for seniors continued under his charge. 

Beginning at least as early as 1891-1892, 
Professor Winchester provided instruction 
in his department for graduate students, 
and for a time conducted special courses for 

aoG 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

them as follows: from 1892-1893 to 1897- 
1898 a course in the history of literary crit- 
icism; on Tennyson and Browning in 1893- 
1894; and in 1894-1895, 1895-1896, and 
1897-1898 a course in the Ehzabethan 
drama. 

In 1916-1917, Professor Winchester made 
certain changes in his scheme of courses in 
order to adjust the work of the department 
to his absence on leave for the second semes- 
ter. In 1918-1919 the conditions arising 
from the estabhshment of the Students 
Army Training Corps prevented any stu- 
dents in the corps from electing work in 
Enghsh hterature. For the handful of 
students who remained free to choose their 
studies. Professor Winchester prepared, as 
a junior elective, a new course, suited to the 
spirit of the times, on the political writings 
of Burke. When the abandonment of the 
corps made possible, in January, the return 
to normal conditions, the interest in the 
experiment led Professor Winchester to 
continue the course through the year. 

From 1912-1913 to 1916-1917 an addi- 
tional elective course in the department was 
offered by Associate Professor Gillet, and 
307 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

in 1917-1918 by Instructor Jacoby. In 
1918-1919 and 1919-1920 Professor Farley 
shared the work of the department and of- 
fered one elective course in addition to the 
introductory course. These changes in the 
staff of the department led to certain mod- 
ifications in the courses offered by Profes- 
sor Winchester which may be traced through 
the four years beginning in 1916-1917, but 
he adhered to his own special fields as closely 
as the considerations of circumstances and 
as generous concessions to the wishes of his 
colleagues would permit. After Professor 
Winchester's illness, Professor Farley and 
Instructor Philip Lombard Given took over 
the conduct of his courses for the remainder 
of the year. 

Aside from his regular courses, Profes- 
sor Winchester in various years met infor- 
mal groups of students interested in the 
work of his department for special reading 
and discussion in certain fields or in the 
works of certain authors. Both in this con- 
nection and in connection with his senior 
seminary, Mrs. Winchester and he fre- 
quently entertained the students in their 
home in a manner whose profit and charm 
308 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

are abiding memories with those who were 
favored to participate in these occasions. 

On five different occasions Professor 
Winchester was absent from the university 
on leave. The year 1880-1881 was spent in 
study at Leipzig and in general European 
travel; the third term of 1895-1896 was spent 
in Italy; the month of May, 1904, was de- 
voted to attendance at the sessions of the 
General Conference of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church in Los Angeles as a delegate; 
the second semester of 1906-1907 was spent 
in general European travel; and during the 
second semester of 1916-1917 he visited Cal- 
ifornia. On each of these trips, except the 
first, he was accompanied by Mrs. Winches- 
ter. He also made briefer visits to Europe 
in four different summer vacations. 

The following pages furnish a somewhat 
detailed statement of the history of the indi- 
vidual courses offered by Professor Win- 
chester during his half -century of teaching. 
The numbers of the courses which appear 
apply to the years which are quoted. There 
was, unfortunately, frequent change of the 
numbers so that the courses must be identi- 
fied in each case by name and not by number. 
309 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

ENGLISH language: REQUIKED FRESHMAN 
COURSE 

This course as first required in 1873-1874 
was announced briefly in the list of studies 
required of freshmen, as follows: 

English: Trench's English, Past and Present. 
Lectures. One hour a week. 

In 1884-1885 the announcement appears 
in the following more elaborate form: 

I. Freshman Year. — During the Freshman year 
the object of the instruction in this department 
is to give the class some knowledge of the outlines 
of the history of our language, and to awaken 
some interest in its study. To this end, a course 
of simple lectures is given in the fall term, recount- 
ing the main facts concerning the rise and early 
history of the language, and these lectures are 
accompanied and followed by recitations from the 
class upon Trench's English, Past and Present. 
The class meets for this exercise but once a week. 

In 1887-1888 the character of the course 
was somewhat changed and the allotment of 
time increased, as the following statement 
shows : 

I. Engmsh Language. Trench's English, 
Past and Present, with a short course of lectures 
upon the rise and early history of the language. 

310 



COURSES AT WESLEYAlSr 

Three times a fortnight during the -first half year. 

Elementary Rhetoric, with frequent practi- 
cal exercises. Three times a fortnight during the 
second half year. 

Course I is required of all Freshmen. 

In 1889-1890 the distribution of the work, 
though not the content, was changed as 
follows : 

I. English Language. Trench's English, 
Past and Present, with a short course of lectures 
upon the rise and early history of the language. 
Once a week during the first term; once a fort- 
night during the second and third terms. 

Elementary Rhetoric, with frequent practi- 
cal exercises. Once a fortnight during the first 
term; once a week during the second and third 
terms. 

Course I is required of all Freshmen. 

In 1890-1891 this course was transferred 
to the new department of English language 
under the charge of Professor Mead. 

ENGLISH language: REQUIRED SOPHOMORE 
COURSE 

This course, as first required in 1873-1874, 
was announced briefly in the list of studies 
required of sophomores, as follows: 

Rhetoric and Logic. — Bain's Manual of Corn- 
ell 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

position and Rhetoric; Atwater's Manual of 
Logic. Five hours a fortnight. 

With changes of text-book this course 
continued through 1883-1884. Thus we find, 
in 1882-1883, that the texts used were Hill's 
Rhetoric and Jevons's Logic, and that the 
announcement also included for the first 
time the phrase "Exercises in criticism of 
standard authors." 

In 1884-1885 the work in logic was trans- 
ferred from this department, and the time 
gained was assigned for the reading and 
criticism of selected writings. The changed 
announcement read as follows : 

II. Sophomore Year. — The study assigned to 
the Sophomore year, in this department, is Rhet- 
oric. The class meets on alternate days through 
half the year. The text-book used is A. S. Hill's 
Principles of Rhetoric, The study of the text- 
book, however, forms only a part of the work of 
the class. The members of the class are required to 
write occasional exercises illustrating and apply- 
ing the principles laid down in the text-book; 
these principles are also applied in the public 
criticism of their regular essays, written once in 
three weeks ; and, finally, they read, in connection 
with their rhetorical study, two or three specimens 
of the best modern English prose, criticise and 

312 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

discuss them in the class, and compare them to 
discover the characteristic excellences and defects 
of each. The writings selected for such reading 
and criticism this year are Macaulay's Life of 
Johnson, Carljle's Essay on Johnson, and Burke's 
speech on "Conciliation with America." The es- 
says of Macaulay and Carlyle are compared with 
respect to their diction, structure of sentence and 
paragraph, modes of illustration, and general 
method of treating the same subject. The speech 
of Burke is studied especially with reference to the 
rhetorical laws of argument and persuasion. 

In 1886-1887 the text-books were changed 
and some adjustments made in the character 
of the course, as the following statement in- 
dicates : 

II. Required of all Sophomores. 

Rhetoric. McElroy's Structure of English 
Prose, and Gummere's Handbook of Poetics. The 
members of the class are required to write — in 
addition to their regular essays — occasional ex- 
ercises illustrating and applying the principles 
laid down in the text-books ; and they read, for 
criticism and discussion in the classroom, two or 
three specimens of the best modern English prose. 
The writings selected for such reading and criti- 
cism this year are Macaulay's Life of Johnson 
and Carlyle's Essay on Johnson. Five times a 
fortnight during the first half year, 

313 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

In the ensuing year Genung's Rhetoric 
was substituted as the text-book. The an- 
nouncement was further modified during 
1889-1890, the last year that Professor Win- 
chester had charge of the course: 

II. Rhetoric. Genung's Practical Rhetoric. 
The members of the class are required to write — ~ 
in addition to their regular essays — occasional 
exercises illustrating and applying the principles 
laid down in the text-book; and they read, for 
criticism and discussion in the classroom, speci- 
mens of the best modern English prose. The spec- 
imens selected for such reading and criticism this 
year are taken from Genung's Handbook of Rhe- 
torical Analysis. Five times a fortnight during 
the first half year. 

Course II is required of all Sophomores. 

I 

GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERA- 
TURE 

This course was originally announced in 
1873-1874 in the Hst of junior electives in 
the following words : 

Rhetoric and English Literature. — Whate- 
ly's Rhetoric; Taine's English Literature (Fiske's 
Abridgment); Historical- and Critical Study of 
English Classics — Clarendon Press Editions of 
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Pope; Ab- 

314 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

bott's Shakespearean Grammar. Five hours a 
fortnight. 

Aside from changes of texts the only sig- 
nificant modification in the announcement of 
this course in the next ten years appeared in 
1881-1882, when the following clause was 
included : 

Selected courses of reading, with examinations.^ 

The announcement for 1884-1885 fully 
sets forth the nature and details of the 
changes thus involved as follows: 

III. Junior Year. — The study of English lit- 
erature is optional during the Junior and Senior 
years. The Junior class, the present year — open, 
like all Junior elective classes, to Seniors as well 
as Juniors — contains 8 Seniors, 36 Juniors, and 
4 Special Students. It meets on alternate days 
throughout the year. The work of this class may 
be divided into three parts. 

1. It is desired, in the first place, that the stu- 
dent should obtain a knowledge of the main facts 
in the history of our literature. For this pur- 
pose, the class reads, for regular recitation, Stop- 
ford Brooke's Primer of English Literature. 
The lessons assigned from it are made very short, 
partly that there may be opportunity, during the 
hour of recitation, for discussion and frequent 

1^^ See above, page 303. 

315 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

half-hour lectures, and partly that members of 
the class may find time to devote to the other 
portions of the work described below. 

2. It is desired, secondly, that the class shall 
during the year read critically at least two or 
three representative specimens of our best litera- 
ture. The last recitation of each week is given to 
this exercise. The works selected this year are 
Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and 
the Nonne Preestes Tale, one canto of Spenser's 
Faery Queen, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and selec- 
tions from Pope's Satires, Members of the class 
are expected to inform themselves upon the his- 
tory of these writings and upon the life and times 
of their authors, and to read them with minute 
care in preparation for the recitation and criti- 
cism of the classroom. Four or five lectures upon 
these selected authors are read by the professor 
before the class. 

It is hoped that this careful study of the liter- 
ature itself in some of its best specimens may not 
only educate the taste and stimulate an interest 
in the highest literature, but may also cultivate 
that habit of thorough and critical reading need- 
ful for the appreciation of what is best in letters. 

3. The third part of the work of this class is 
a brief course of collateral reading. Several dif- 
ferent courses are laid out by the professor at 
the beginning of the year, from which each mem- 
ber of the class must select one. Each course 
contains a few of the most representative writings 

316 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

of a limited period. The courses for the present 
year are five, as follows : 

CouESE I. Marlowe's Faustus and Greene's 
Friar Bacon; Shakespeare — four plajs and ten 
sonnets; Bacon's Essays — selections; Milton's 
U Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, Paradise 
Lost (Book I), Samson Agonistes. 

Course II. Johnson's Lives of Milton, Dryden, 
Swift, Addison, Pope, and Gray; Milton's Comus 
and Paradise Lost (Book I) ; Dryden's Absalom 
and Achitophel; Swift's Tale of a Tub, Journal to 
Stella, letters I-XII; Addison's Spectator — 25 
selected papers; Pope's Rape of the Lock; Gray's 
Elegy, 

Course III. Thackeray's Lectures on Swift, 
Addison, Steele, Prior, Gay, Pope, Sterne, and 
Goldsmith; Swift's Tale of a Tub, Battle of the 
Books, Journal to Stella, letters I-XII ; Addison's 
Spectator — 20 selected papers; Steele's Tatler — 
12 selected papers ; Goldsmith's Deserted Village, 
Retaliation, and Vicar of Wakefield; Leslie Ste- 
phen's Johnson, chaps, iii, iv. 

Course IV. Leslie Stephen's Johnson, chaps. 
iii, iv; Macaulay's Life of Johnson; Johnson's 
Rasselas and Vanity of Human Wishes; Cowper's 
Task, Book I; Burke's two American Speeches, 
Reflections on the Revolution in France (the first 
half). Letter to a Noble Lord; Burns — selected 
poems. 

Course V. Burns — selections ; Wordsworth — 
selected poems in Arnold's edition; Shelley — se- 
317 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

lected poems in Stopford Brooke's edition ; Keats' 
Hyperion, Odes, and Sonnets; Byron — one canto 
of Childe Harold; Lamb — selections from the Es- 
says of Elia; De Quince j's Recollections of Lamb 
and Wordsworth, Suspiria de Profundis; Shairp's 
Essay on Wordsworth. 

With each of these courses is given to the stu- 
dent a short list of the books which he may con- 
sult with advantage for the history and criticism 
of the literature he is reading. It is believed that 
such a brief course of reading not only cultivates 
a taste for what is best in letters, but also gives 
the student an intelligent notion of the relations 
of literature to the social and political history of 
the period in which it was produced, such as he 
could hardly gain from a text-book. The care 
with which the reading is done is tested by a series 
of written examinations held at stated intervals 
throughout the year. 

From 1886-1887 to 1889-1890 inclusive, 
the meetings of the class were reduced to 
three times a fortnight, but with the separa- 
tion of departments in 1890-1891 the meet- 
ings of the class were changed to twice a 
week, and in 1896-1897 were further in- 
creased to three times a week. The an- 
nouncement in the catalogue for 1898-1899, 
the last year that this course was a Junior 
elective, read as follows : 
318 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

I. General Introduction to English Liter- 
ature. 1. An outline of the history of the liter- 
ature. Stopford Brooke's English Literature, 
with lectures. First half year. 2. Classroom 
reading and discussion of literary masterpieces. 
The works selected are : Chaucer's Prologue to the 
Canterbury Tales, and the Nonne Freest es Tale; 
Shakespeare's Hamlet; selections from Pope's 
Satires. Second half year, 3. A brief course of 
collateral reading, with written recitations and 
essays upon subjects drawn from the reading. 
Members of the class may choose any one of the 
courses in Winchester's Five Short Courses of 
Reading in English Literature. These courses 
consist of selections from the following authors: 

(1) 1559-1674. Marlowe, Greene, Shake- 
speare, Bacon, Milton. 

(2) 1660-1745. Dryden, Addison, Steele, 
Swift; with Johnson's Lives of Dryden, Swift, 
and Pope, and Thackeray's Lectures on the Eng- 
lish Humorists. 

(3) 1745-1789. Gray, Goldsmith, Johnson, 
Burke, Cowper, Bums ; with Leslie Stephen's Life 
of Johnson, Dobson's Life of Goldsmith, Morley's 
Life of Burke. 

(4) 1789-1832. Wordsworth, Coleridge, De 
Quincey, Lamb, Byroti, Shelley, Keats. 

(5) 1832-1880. Carlyle, Ruskin, Matthew 
Arnold, Browning, Tennyson. Mon., Wed., Fri., 
at 12. 11 S. C. (V.) 

Course I is elective for Juniors. 
319 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

In 1899-1900 the course became for the 
first time a sophomore elective, and the 
meetings were twice a week. This arrange- 
ment continued through 1911-1912. 

From 1912-1913 to 1915-1916 and again 
in 1917-1918, the course was given three 
times a week by Professor Winchester with 
the aid of an instructor. In 1916-1917, ow- 
ing to Professor Winchester's absence on 
leave for part of the year, the course was 
entirely in charge of Assistant Professor 
Gillet. In 1918-1919 Professor Winchester 
transferred the charge of this course to Pro- 
fessor Farley. 

The announcement for 1911-1912, the 
last year that Professor Winchester had sole 
charge of the course, was the first occasion 
on which his list of readings was omitted 
from the catalogue statement, which was 
changed to read as follows : 

I. General Introduction to English Liter- 
ature. An outline of the history of the litera- 
ture, with classroom reading and discussion of 
representative works illustrative of different vari- 
eties and periods of English Literature. Moody 
and Lovett's History of English Literature is used 
as a text-book, with Cunliffe, Pyre, and Young's 

320 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

Century Readings for a Course vn English Liter- 
ature, Hon., Wed., at 12, 14 F. H. (V.) 
Course I is elective for Sophomores. 

The following was the announcement for 
the course for 1917-1918, the last year in 
which Professor Winchester shared in its 
direction : 

I. General Inteoduction to English Liter- 
ature. An outline of the history of the litera- 
ture, with classroom reading and discussion of 
representative works illustrative of different vari- 
eties and periods of English literature. Moody 
and Lovett's History of English Literature is 
used as a text-book, with Cunliffe, Pyre, and 
Young's Century Readings for a Course in Eng- 
lish Literature. Section 1, Mon., Wed., Fri., 
at 12, Section 2, Mon., at 12; Tu., Th., at 8, 
14 F. H. (sections in 12 F. H.). Professor Win- 
chester and Mr. Jacoby. (V.) 

Course I is elective for Sophomores. 

LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD OF QUEEN ANNE 

Given as senior elective, 1881-1882; 1882- 
1883; 1893-1894; and 1895-1896. 

The first announcement of this course ap- 
peared in the catalogue for 1881-1882, under 
the heading of senior electives, in the follow- 
ing words : 

321 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

English Literature. — Literature of the Pe- 
riod of Queen Anne. Lectures on the history of 
the period; criticism and discussion of represen- 
tative authors. Five hours a fortnight. 

The announcements for the last two years, 
in order, were : 

III. English Literature of the Period of 
Queen Anne, 1700-1745. Defoe, Steele, Addison, 
Swift, Pope. Critical reading and discussion; 
lectures. Twice (counting as three times) a 
week. 

Courses II and III are elective (with some re- 
strictions) for those who have taken Course I. 
Course III will be omitted in 1894-95. Course II 
is omitted the present year. 

and: 

11. English Literature of the Period of 
Queen Anne, 1700-1745. Defoe, Steele, Addison, 
Swift, Pope. Critical reading and discussion; 
lectures. Section I, Mon., Wed,, Fri., at 10 (first 
term); Man., Wed., at 10 (second term). Section 
II, Mon., Wed., Fri., at 12 (-first term); Mon., 
Wed., at W (second term). 

Course II counts as three times a week for the 
year. 

Courses II and III are elective (with some re- 
strictions) for those who have taken Course I. 
Course II will be omitted in 1896-97. Course III 
is omitted the present year. 

322 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

Given as senior seminary, 1900-1901; 
1902-1903; 1903-1904; and 1910-1911. The 
announcement for the first of these years 
read: 

IV. Literature of the Period of Queen 
Anne. Defoe, Steele, Addison, Swift, Boling- 
broke, Pope. Mon., Wed., Fri., at 8. 56 N. C. (I.) 

Course IV is elective, with some restrictions, for 
those who have taken Course I and are taking 
either Course II or Course VI. 

In the last year the following was the an- 
nouncement : 

VI. Literature of the Period of Queen 
Anne. Defoe, Steele, Addison, Swift, Boling- 
broke, Pope. Mon., Wed., at 11. 23 F. H. (IV.) 

Courses V, VI, and VII are elective, with the 
permission of the instructor, for those who have 
taken Course I, either Course II, Course III, or 
Course IV, and Course VIII. Courses V and VII 
are omitted the present year. 

This course, in its two forms, was given 
in eight different years. 

ENGLISH LITERATUEE^ 1789-1832 

Given as senior elective in 1883-1884; 
1884-1885; 1885-1886; 1886-1887; 1887- 
1888; 1891-1892; 1897-1898; and 1899- 
1900. 

323 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

The first announcement of this course ap- 
peared in the catalogue for 1883-1884, under 
the heading of senior electives, as follows: 

English Literature. — ^Literature of the Pe- 
riod of George III. Lectures on the history of 
the period; criticism and discussion of represen- 
tative authors. Five hours a fortnight. 

In 1884-1885, when the practice was be- 
gun of listing courses in the catalogue by 
departments, the statement took the follow- 
ing form : 

IV. In the Senior year an advanced class in 
English Literature is formed, open only to a lim- 
ited number of those who have pursued in the 
Junior year the course just described. This class 
numbers this year 1 graduate student, 13 Seniors, 
and 2 Special Students; it recites two hours a 
day on alternate days throughout the year. The 
object of the study of this class is to gain a some- 
what thorough knowledge of the literature of 
some brief period. The period chosen for the 
study of the present year is that embraced be- 
tween the years 1789 and 1832. A course of lec- 
tures is given the class, during the first six weeks 
of the term, upon the history of this period, espe- 
cially in its relations to literature. Then the 
principal works of Burke (after 1789), Burns, 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, De Quincey, Lamb, Scott, 
Byron, Shelley, and Keats are divided among the 

324 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

members of the class for reading. They read 
these works, and, in turn, present before the class 
careful analyses and full discussions of what they 
have read. In this manner every member of the 
class either reads himself or hears discussed at 
length nearly every one of the most important 
specimens of our literature during the period stud- 
ied. The regular discussions of the classroom are 
supplemented by a course of lectures upon the 
period. The class are required to take notes of 
all discussions, and the thoroughness with which 
the work is done is tested by a series of written 
examinations. 

In 1899-1900 the announcement was in 
the following form : 

XL English Poetry, 1789-1832. Burns, 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Scott, Byron, 
Shelley, Keats. Critical reading and discussion; 
lectures. Section 1, Mon., Wed,, FrL, at 9; 
Section 2, Mon., Wed., Fri., at 11. 56 N. C. (II.) 

Course II is elective (with some restrictions) 
for those who have taken Course I. 

In 1901-1902 the course was changed to 
a junior elective, with the following an- 
nouncement : 

III. English Poetry, 1789-1832. Bums, 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley, 
Keats. Mon., Wed., Frl, at 9. 11 S. C. (II.) 

325 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

Course III is elective for those who have taken 
Course I. Courses II and III are given in alter- 
nate years, Course II being omitted the present 
year. 

The course was given in this form in 1901- 
1902; 1903-1904; 1906-1907; 1908-1909; 
1911-1912; and 1913-1914, in which year the 
announcement was in the following terms: 

III. English Poetry, 1789-1832. Bums, 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley, 
Keats. Mon„ Wed,, FrL, at 9. 14 F. H. Pro- 
fessor Winchester. (H*) 

Courses II and III are elective for those who 
have taken Course I. Course II is omitted in 
1913-14. 

A portion of the course was given as a 
junior elective during the first semester of 
1916-1917, with the following statement: 

III. Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge. Mon., 
Wed., FrL, at 9 (first half year), 14 F. H. Pro- 
fessor Winchester. (H*) 

Courses II-V are elective for those who have 
taken Course I. Courses II, IV, and V are omit- 
ted in 1916-17. 

In all, this course was given in fourteen 
different years. 

326 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

ENGLISH LITERATURE^ 1830-1880 

Given as senior elective in 1888-1889; 
1889-1890; 1890-1891; 1892-1893; 1894- 
1895; 1896-1897; 1898-1899; and 1900-1901. 
The first catalogue announcement read as 
follows: 

IV. English Literature from 1830 to 1880, 
especially as represented in the work of Carlyle, 
Tennyson, and Browning. Members of the class 
will read carefully the principal writings of these 
authors; will consider their attitude toward the 
leading movements in thought and in society dur- 
ing a half century ; and will prepare abstracts and 
critical studies of what they read, for discussion 
before the class. Five times a fortnight. 

Course IV is open only to those who have taken 
Course III. 

In 1900-1901 the wording of the an- 
nouncement was: 

II. English Literature of the Victorian 
Period. Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, Tennyson, 
Browning. Mon., Wed., at 9. 11 S. C. 

Course II is elective for those who have taken 
Course I. (11.) 

Given as a junior elective in 1902-1903; 
1904-1905; 1909-1910; 1913-1914; and 1914- 
327 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

1915. The announcements for the first and 
last of these dates were : 

II. English Literature of the Victorian 
Period. Carljle, Ruskin, Arnold, Tennyson, 
Browning. Mon., Wed,, Fri., at 9, 11 S. C. (II.) 

Course II is elective for those who have taken 
Course I. 

and: 

IV. Victorian Literature. Carlyle, Ruskin, 
Browning, Tennyson. Mon.y Wed; Fri., at 9. 
14 F. H. Professor Winchester. (H*) 

Courses II-V are elective for those who have 
taken Course I. Courses II and III are omitted 
in 1914-15. 

In 1916-1917 a portion of this course was 
given in the first semester as the senior sem- 
inary, and in 1917-1918, the whole course 
furnished the subject for the senior semi- 
nary, with the following announcements: 

X. Studies in the Poetry of Browning and 
Tennyson. Mon., Wed,, Fri„ at 11. 23 F. H. 
Professor Winchester. (IV.) 

Courses VIII-X are elective, with the permis- 
sion of the instructor, for those who have taken 
Course I, and either Course II or Course III. 
Courses VIII and IX are omitted in 1916-17. 

VII. Literature of the Victorian Period. 
Carljle, Ruskin, Browning, Tennyson. Mon., 

328 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

Wed., at 11. 2S F. H. Peofessor Winches- 
ter. (IV.) 
Courses V-VII are elective, with the permission 
of the instructor, for those who have taken Course 

I, and either Course II or Course III. Courses 
V and VI are omitted in 1917-18. 

Altogether, this course was given fifteen 
times. 

ESSAYISTS AND REVIEWERS OF THE EARLY 
NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Given as the senior seminary in 1901- 
1902; 1906-1907; 1907-1908; 1908-1909; 
1911-1912 ; 1914-1915 ; and 1919-1920. For 
the first of these dates the announcement 
was: 

V. Essayists and Reviewers of the Early 
Nineteenth Century. Jeffrey, Hazlitt, De 
Quincey, Lamb, Wilson, Hunt. Mon„ Wed.y at 

II. 56 N. C. (IV.) 
Course V is elective, with some restrictions, for 

those who have taken Course I, either Course II 
or Course III, and Course VI. Courses IV and V 
are given in alternate years, Course IV being omit- 
ted the present year. 

The announcement in the last year was: 
VII. Studies in the Early Nineteenth Cen- 
329 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

TURY Essay. Tm., Th., Sat., at 10, 2S F. H. 
Professor Winchester. (I^O 

Course VII is elective, with the permission of 
the instructor, for Seniors who have previously 
taken Course I and one other course. 

This course was given in seven different 
years. 

NEW ENGLAND* LITERATURE 

Given as senior seminary in 1904-1905; 
1905-1906 ; 1909-1910 ; 1912-1913 ; and 1918- | 
1919. 

The first announcement of this course 
read: 

IV. New England Literature, 1835-1885. 
Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Hawthorne, Whit- 
tier, Holmes. Mon., Wed., at 11. 23 F. H. (IV.) 

Courses IV, V, and VI are elective, with some 
restrictions, for those who have taken Course I, 
either Course II or Course III, and Course VII. 
Courses V and VI are omitted the present year. 

The last announcement of this course 
read: 

Vlll-f-. Studies in New England Litera- 
ture. Tm., Th.y Sat., at 10. 23 F. H. Profes- 
sor Winchester. (I^O 

Courses VII and VIII are elective, with the 
permission of the instructor, for those who have 

330 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

taken Course I and one other course in the depart- 
ment. Course VII is omitted in 1918-19. 

This course was given in five different 
years. 

SIX PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE 

Given as a junior elective in 1905-1906; 
1907-1908; 1910-1911; 1912-1913; 1915- 
1916; 1917-1918; 1919-1920. For the first 
year the announcement was as follows : 

II. Six Representative Plays of Shake- 
SPEAEE. A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry 
IV, As You Like It, Othello, Antony and Cleopa- 
tra, The Winter's Tale, Sidney Lee's Life and 
Works of Shakespeare. Mon., Wed,, Fri., at 9. 
14 F. H. (II.) 

Courses II, III, and IV are elective for those 
who have completed Course I. Courses III and 
IV are omitted the present year. 

The announcement for the last year read : 

V. Six Plays of Shakespeare. Tu., Th., Sat., 
at 11, 11 F. H. Professor Winchester. (X.) 

Course V is elective for those who have taken 
Course I. 

This course was given seven times. 

POLITICAL WRITINGS OF BURKE 

This course, born of war-time conditions, 
331 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

was given only once, namely, in 1918-1919. 
In creating this new course at seventy-two. 
Professor Winchester displayed the same 
thoroughness of preparation and the same 
freshness of spirit that had marked his entry 
into new fields in his earlier years. The 
course was a junior elective and the form of 
the announcement was : 

VI+. Studies in the Political Weitings of 
Edmund Burke. Tu,, Th., Sat., at 11, 11 F. H. 
Professoe Winchester. (X.) 

Courses II-VI are elective for those who have 
taken Course I. Courses III-V are omitted in 
1918-19. 

ELEMENTS OF LITERARY CRITICISM 

Given as a junior elective every year from 
1891-1892 to 1919-1920, inclusive, with the 
exception of 1916-1917 and 1918-1919, or 
in twenty-seven years. 

In the first year the announcement was 
made in the following terms: 

III. The Elements of Literary Criticism. 
A course of lectures upon the essential elements 
and the various forms of literature. Once a week. 

Course III is elective for those who have taken 
Course I. 

332 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

In the last year the announcement took 
the following form: 

VI. Elements of Literaey Ceiticism. Dis- 
cussion of the essential elements and the various 
forms of literature, with practical exercises in the 
application of critical principles. Winchester's 
Principles of Literary Criticism is used as a text- 
book. Sat., at 8. 29 P. H. Peofessoe Win- 

CHESTEE. (VII.) 

Course VI is elective for those who have taken 
Course I. 

RHETORICAL EXERCISES 

In 1883-1884, and for many years previ- 
ous, the catalogue contained in the list of 
required studies for the freshman, sopho- 
more, and junior years, the entry 

Rhetorical exercises. Compositions and dec- 
lamations. 

and for the senior year 

Rhetorical exercises. Forensics, essays, or 
original declamations. 

The catalogue for 1884-1885 in the state- 
ment for the department of rhetoric and 
Enghsh literature, contained the following 
entry, which reappeared in each succeeding 
year to 1889-1890, except that the first two 
333 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

sentences relating to the freshman require- 
ment were omitted from 1887-1888 onward, 
in which year the content of the required 
freshman course was correspondingly al- 
tered.^ 

V. English Composition. The Freshmen pre- 
sent, once in two weeks, exercises in the simpler 
forms of composition, which are discussed before 
the class. This work is under the direction of 
Mr. W. E. Mead.^ Every member of the Sopho- 
more and Junior classes is required to write nine 
essays in the year; every Senior must write an 
argument for debate before his class, and either 
four essays or two public orations. All these ex- 
ercises are read and corrected by the Professor 
of Rhetoric. The Sophomores meet also nine 
times a year for general oral discussion and crit- 
icism of their themes; and every member of the 
Junior class meets the Professor privately, once a 
term, for individual criticism upon his work. 

After the division of the department in 
1890-1891, Professor Winchester retained 
charge only of the senior rhetorical exer- 
cises. 

SENIOR RHETORICALS 

From 1890-1891 to 1909-1910, twenty 
years, Professor Winchester had charge of 

* See above, page 310. 2 gee above, page 304. 

334 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

the rhetorical work required of all seniors. 
Beginning in 1890-1891 the announcement 
for many years read: 

III. English Composition. The rhetorical ex- 
ercises of the Senior class are assigned to this 
department. Every Senior must write an argu- 
ment for debate before his class; and either four 
essays or two public orations. All written work 
receives the personal criticism of the Professor, 
and the orations are also rehearsed before the 
Professor of Elocution. 

In 1905-1906, the statement was changed 
to read : 

X. English Composition. The rhetorical ex- 
ercises of the Senior class are assigned to this 
department. Every Senior (unless excused from 
half this requirement by the provisions of Course 
IX) must write either four essays or two orations. 
All written work receives the personal criticism 
of the instructor. 

The rhetorical exercises of the Senior year are 
rated as the equivalent of three hours' work per 
week for the year ; these hours are required in ad- 
dition to the minimum quota (14) prescribed for 
Seniors. 

As a result of a general revision of the 
curriculum, the announcement was further 
modified in 1908-1909, as follows: 
335 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

IX. English Composition. The rhetorical ex- 
ercises of the Senior class are assigned to this 
department. Every Senior (unless excused from 
half this requirement by the election of Debate 
as specified below) must write either four essays 
or two orations. All written work receives the 
personal criticism of the instructor. 

The rhetorical exercises of the Senior year are 
rated as the equivalent of one hour's work per 
week for the year; this hour is included in the 
minimum quota (13) prescribed for Seniors. 

This senior requirement was last enforced 
with the class of 1910. 

DEBATE 

Professor Winchester offered this course 
in each of the thirteen years from 1897-1898 
to 1909-1910 inclusive. In the first year the 
announcement of the course appeared in the 
following form : 

V. Debate. Weekly practical exercises. Two 
members of the class are appointed to conduct the 
debate at each exercise. They must prepare writ- 
ten briefs of their argument, which are revised and 
corrected by the instructor, and are then publicly 
posted four days before the debate. 

Course V is elective for Seniors, and those who 
elect it are excused from half the rhetorical work 
required in Course VI. Mon., at 10, L. Ch. 2, 

336 



COURSES AT WESLEYAlSr 

In the last year it was given, the form of 
the announcement was : 

Debate. Weekly practical exercises. Two 
members of the class are appointed to conduct the 
debate at each exercise. They must prepare writ- 
ten briefs of their argument, which are revised 
and corrected by the instructor, and are then 
publicly posted four days before the debate. 
Mon,, at 8, 16 F. H. 

The course in debate is elective for Seniors, and 
those who elect it are excused from half the rhe- 
torical work required of Seniors. It does not 
count in the quota for graduation, except as part 
of the requirement in rhetoricals. 

In 1910-1911, senior rhetoricals and the 
course in debate were replaced by the follow- 
ing course, which was repeated without 
change of announcement for six successive 
years, the last being 1915-1916. 

A course in Public Speaking, elective for Se- 
niors, is given under the direction of Professor 
Winchester and Mr. Wetzel. (See page 66.) 

The statement of the Department of Pub- 
lic Speaking on page 66, read : 

C. Seniors. A course in the composition and 
delivery of the different forms of public address. 
The student is required to deliver one original 
speech before the class each month. These are 

337 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

criticised by Professor Winchester before being 
delivered. Sat., at 11. 13 F, H. 

These courses meet once a week for twenty 
weeks. Courses A and B count half-an-hour, 
Course C one hour, for the year. 

GRADUATE INSTRUCTION 

A special statement with reference to 
graduate instruction in the department first 
appeared in the catalogue announcement for 
1891-1892 in the following terms: 

V. Graduate Instruction. Graduate stu- 
dents in this department, for the present year, 
take Courses II and III ; and, in addition, are as- 
signed special and more extended courses of read- 
ing and investigation in the field covered by Course 
II, under the personal direction of the Professor. 
The principal topics assigned for such study, this 
year, are : The Causes and Significance of the Ro- 
mantic Movement, 1789-1832; The Ethics of the 
Period as reflected in its Poetry; and The Later 
Revolutionary Sentiment, especially as illustrated 
in the Life and Work of Shelley. 

Between 1892-1893 and 1897-1898 inclu- 
sive, courses for graduate students only were 
announced in the history of English literary 
criticism, the poetry of Tennyson and 
Browning, and in the Elizabethan drama. 

In 1897-1898 the announcement of these 
338 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

graduate courses was followed by the state- 
ment: 

The provisions for graduate instruction in this 
department may be modified or increased in ac- 
cordance with the needs or wishes of graduate 
students. 

From 1899-1900 to 1913-1914 inclusive, 
the departmental announcement in the cat- 
alogue contained only the following refer- 
ence to graduate instruction : 

Special provision for graduate instruction is 
made to meet the wants of individual students. 

From 1914-1915 onward, while no cata- 
logue statement appeared, provision contin- 
ued to be made for graduate study in the 
department. From 1892 to 1917 inclusive 
forty-eight candidates who presented theses 
in English Literature received the master's 
degree. 

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM 

This course was offered to graduate stu- 
dents in each of the six years 1892-1893 to 
1897-1898 inclusive. The announcement 
for the first year was : 

V. The History or English Literary Criti- 
cism. An outhne study of the growth and devel- 

339 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

opment of English criticism, and of the changes 
in critical standards from the sixteenth to the 
nineteenth century. 

Sidney's Defense of Poesie, Dry den's Prefaces 
and Essay on Dramatic Poetry, Addison's Papers 
on Paradise Lost, selections from the critical writ- 
ings of Johnson, and from the Reviewers of the 
beginning of this century, will be studied as rep- 
resenting various phases of English critical opin- 
ion. Tu., S:S0-5, 

Course V is open to graduate students only. 

For the last year it was : 

VIII. The History of English Literary 
Criticism. An outline study of the growth of the 
development of English criticism, and of the 
changes in critical standards and in literary forms 
from 1579 to 1789. Sidney's Defense of Poesie, 
Dryden's Prefaces and Essay on Dramatic Poetry, 
Addison's Papers on Paradise Lost, and selections 
from the critical writings of Johnson and Gold- 
smith, will be studied as representing various 
phases of English critical opinion. Once a week. 
56 N. C. 



THE POETRY OF TENNYSON AND BROWNING 

The following course was offered to grad- 
uate students in only a single year, 1893- 
1894: 

340 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

VI. The Poetey of Tennyson and Brown- 
ing. Critical reading, discussion, lectures. Once 
a week. 

Courses V and VI are open to graduate students 
only. 

THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 

Given for graduate students in the three 
years, 1894-1895; 1895-1896; and 1897- 
1898. 

The following was the announcement for 
the first year : 

VI. The Elizabethan Drama. A survey of 
the origins of the Elizabethan drama with some 
notice of the principal works of Shakespeare's 
immediate predecessors, followed by more careful 
study of a somewhat large group of Shakespeare's 
most important dramas. Once a week. 

Courses V and VI are open to graduate stu- 
dents only. 

This was amended in the last year to read: 

VII. The Elizabethan Drama. A survey of 
the origin of the Elizabethan drama, with some 
notice of the principal works of Shakespeare's 
immediate predecessors, followed by more careful 
study of a group of Shakespeare's most impor- 
tant dramas. Once a week. 56 N. C. 



341 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

REQUIREMENTS FOR ADMISSION 

As Professor Winchester indicated in his 
own speech at the complimentary dinner/ 
he was for years closely associated with the 
various movements for the estabhshment of 
uniform entrance requirements, especially 
in English. Apparently the first suggestion 
of this sort originated with the Association 
of Colleges in New England in the autumn 
of 1878 and as a result of these proposals 
and others made in the autumn of 1879, a 
group of New England colleges joined in 
establishing uniform requirements for ad- 
mission in several of the departments includ- 
ing English. The action of the Wesleyan 
faculty was taken in this matter on Novem- 
ber 16th, 1880, and the statement of the en- 
trance requirements in English, as thus out- 
lined, first appeared in the catalogue for 
1880-1881. These new requirements re- 
placed the somewhat perfunctory tests of 
earlier years which Professor Winchester 
described in his address.^ 

In 1885 there was formed the Commis- 



^See above, page 108. 
2 See above, page 105. 

342 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

sion of New England Colleges on Entrance 
Examinations which extended and carried 
forward the work previously mentioned. 
From this commission and a similar commis- 
sion in the middle states, there arose sug- 
gestion for a joint conference on uniform 
entrance requirements in English. At this 
conference, which was held in Philadelphia 
in May, 1894, Professor Winchester was 
chairman of the New England delegation. 
The result of the labors of this conference 
is to be found in the establishment of the 
National Conference on Uniform Entrance 
Requirements in English, and in the new 
entrance requirements in Enghsh which 
were adopted by the Wesleyan faculty in 
October, 1894, and printed in the catalogue 
for 1894-1895. 

In 1906 there was organized the Confer- 
ence of New England Colleges on Entrance 
Requirements in English. Professor Win- 
chester was elected President of this confer- 
ence and chairman of its executive commit- 
tee and held this position until 1916 when he 
declined re-election. 

Further changes recommended by this 
conference were adopted in 1909 and printed 
343 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

in the Wesleyan catalogue for 1909-1910. 
The National Conference on Uniform En- 
trance Requirements in English in 1914 
made recommendations which were ap- 
proved by the College Entrance Examina- 
tion Board and which are set forth in the 
Wesleyan catalogue for 1914-1915. These 
requirements were further modified and the 
statement of them appears in the Wesleyan 
catalogue for 1919-1920. 

Until 1912 Professor Winchester was 
usually, if not invariably, one of the New 
England delegates to the National Confer- 
ence on Uniform Entrance Requirements 
in English. Of his work in that conference 
Dr. Wilson Farrand, headmaster of the 
Newark Academy, for many years secretary 
of the conference, has written: 

In this meeting [1894], as in the subsequent 
meetings of the conference. Professor Winchester 
was a notable figure. He was not especially con- 
versant with the details of school work and he was 
not an aggressive fighter, but his wonderful ac- 
quaintance with English literature, his unfailing 
courtesy and good nature, his calm judgment, 
and his thorough good sense, did much to bring 
about harmony between the opposing factions. 

The same qualities which marked his work in 
344 



COURSES AT WESLEYAN 

the first meeting naturally persisted in the others. 
. . . While thoroughly receptive to new ideas and 
perfectly ready to advance, Professor Winches- 
ter stood firmly for holding fast to the things 
which had been proved, and for taking no step 
in advance until it was reasonably certain that it 
would be wisely taken. 

There is little more to be said of his work in 
the conference than could be said by anyone who 
knew the man. He was not an aggressive leader, 
he never advocated or tried to force through any- 
thing, but he was one of the wisest and sanest of 
all the members of the conference, and a man who 
carried great influence because of his personality, 
his scholarship, and his ripe judgment. 

Of Professor Winchester's services as 
member and president of the Conference of 
New England Colleges on Entrance Re- 
quirements in English from its establish- 
ment in 1906 until 1916, Professor Carroll 
Lewis Maxcy of the Department of Eng- 
lish of Williams College, who has been sec- 
retary-treasurer of the conference from its 
establishment, has written: 

I can bear witness to the interested part that 
Professor Winchester took in all of our work. 
We regarded him unanimously as the "Dean," so 
to speak, of the conference, and his word and 
judgment weighed with us as final matters. We 

345 



PROFESSOR WINCHESTER 

all realized the value of his experience as tried 
through many years of teaching; we appreciated 
the true worth of his ripe appreciation of all that 
is excellent in literature; and in the selection of 
the works to be included in the entrance-list his 
judgment was practically regarded as authorita- 
tive. And no report of our numerous gatherings 
would be complete without mention of the affec- 
tion with which we regarded him. I think he often 
looked on many of us as "boys," and he used to 
joke with us in a fatherly way that I personally 
shall always recall with great pleasure. Our 
meetings partook largely of the nature of "re- 
unions" — almost of "family reunions" — and for 
this he was responsible. 



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